Updated: I'm more loyal to Mint: Goodbye Charter One / Citizens Bank, hello USAA

I use Mint to plan and budget. It's a great product (and Intuit agrees, they recently acquired Mint for $170 million). But about a month ago my bank, Charter One (a local name for Citizens Bank), stopped updating in Mint. There have been a lot of complaints in the forums; some people are upset at Mint but I'm not.

Instead of blaming either company; I'm just moving on. Mint provides a service I can't get elsewhere but banking at Charter One is generic. So I opened a checking account at USAA. USAA doesn't have local banks; you do everything online. Banking online is refreshing:

• Deposit from home with your iPhone or scanner. You just take a picture of the check and the funds are instantly available. If for some reason it won't accept the check USAA will send you pre-paid envelopes to use. I've used the iPhone application once and it worked really well.
• Use any ATM and USAA will reimburse you for the fee.

It just makes sense that eventually my bank would operate entirely online. HSBC and Ally offer the most competitive savings account rates around and they are online only (HSBC gives you an ATM card but you cannot go in and get customer service at a local bank). The only thing that has held people back has been what to do with physical checks but USAA has that solved and I suspect other banks will follow suit.

In case of emergency I also opened a Bank of America account so I still have a local bank but I don't plan on using it.

Update: Suddenly Charter One is working again and all of the old data has been imported into Mint. Kudos Mint and Charter One (I'm still not going to use my Charter One account though)