Park Sterling bank likes being in the middle

There’s an oft-heard regional radio commercial these days where a business owner complains of the advice he is getting from his staff. One staffer says that small is the new big, while another says big is the new small. He ends up taking advice from an intern.

But what if you are positioned in the middle, perfectly between the big and the small?

There’s where Park Sterling bank of Charlotte finds itself – in the middle, exactly where CEO Jim Cherry wants to be.

Large banks have plenty of products and service but lack flexibility and individual services, he says. Small banks are loved by their community but lack the solutions their customers want.

As the largest community bank in the region, Park Sterling is “nimble” enough to quickly meet its customers’ needs, Cherry said.

Park Sterling has been expanding. With the purchase of Provident Community Bank for $6.5 million in March, Park Sterling added nine South Carolina branches, including locations in Rock Hill, and acquired, and kept, a like-minded leadership team to spearhead local efforts.

The purchase of Provident Community Bank “filled in the dots for us,” Cherry said.

Last week Park Sterling celebrated that acquisition, cutting the ribbon on a new combined Rock Hill facility – each bank had a Rock Hill office – and holding a series of board meetings at Carroll Hall at Winthrop University. Larry Carroll, a Rock Hill native, was one of the founding board members of Park Sterling when it started raising capital in 2006.

At the ribbon-cutting, Cherry touted some of the services he said makes Park Sterling a leader in turning a smart phone into a wallet.

“What’s out there doesn’t get the whole job done,” Cherry said of the many banking apps. There are many that help customers find a branch, check account balances, transfer funds between accounts, and even do “photo capture” deposit: take a photo of a check with a smart phone camera, and it’s automatically deposited into an account.

But, Cherry asks, can customers spend money from an account by phone?

At Park Sterling they can.

The bank offers a picture-pay feature, where customers photograph a bill they want paid, confirm the password, payee and amount, and Park Sterling takes over. It will either send a check or make an electronic transfer of funds. The whole process usually takes about seven days, Cherry said. Other banks offer this service, but not from the convenience of a smart phone, he said.

“Eventually everyone will offer this,” Cherry said.

Another service offered by Park Sterling is debit card protection. Software from Malauzai of San Diego on the Park Sterling app allows customers to turn a debit card on or off. Malauzai officials say the average customer will switch his or her debit card on or off three to five times per month.

According to news reports, larger banks say the feature can be inconvenient to customers, as they might forget whether their debit card if off when they try to use it.

But, as Cherry points out, “you can turn the card off and on in real time, at will, with your phone.”

As with photo pay, Cherry predicts everyone will soon offer the on-off feature.

But even with the ability to shut off a debit card, customers should always notify their bank if they think their card has been stolen or can’t be found. Many of the protections for consumers built into U.S. law are dependent on consumers providing timely notification to their bank that their card is the wrong hands.

This story was originally published November 2, 2014 at 7:16 PM with the headline "Park Sterling bank likes being in the middle."