‘Aggressive’ About Image Exchange, National City Watches Volume Climb

A $36-million in image-exchange technology is beginning to bear fruit for National City Corp. The Cleveland-based bank began trading digital check images in April on a network operated by SVPCO and has seen volume climb from a few hundred daily files to the current rate ranging from 10,000 to 70,000, according to Stephen C. Braat, project manager for check image at the bank. Bucking the conventional wisdom that sending electronic check files is easier than receiving them via image exchange, National City has been sending and receiving from the first day, putting the bank in position to build transaction volume quickly and wring the most benefit in cost savings from the network. “Our stakeholders want to ramp up volume very fast,” Braat tells Digital Transactions News. Speaking today at the the 10th Annual CheckImage Conference in Orlando, Fla., Braat told his audience the bank will begin trading images with an unnamed fourth exchange partner next week. It already exchanges with Union Bank of California, the Federal Reserve, and two other banks whose names Braat says he can't disclose. In forging these multiple exchange relationships and in its willingness to be an early receiver as well as sender, National City stands out among SVPCO's clients, the network says. “It's probably the most aggressive image-exchange participant on the SVPCO network today,” Susan Goold, director for products and services at the New York-based network, said in introducing Braat. The early success hasn't come without considerable expense in time and effort. Braat told attendees the bank spent $36 million and 18 months getting ready to clear checks via image exchange. But now the bank's ambitions for its new platform are growing by the day. While just two of National City's seven processing sites are producing all of National City's image-exchange volume now, Braat said, all seven will be enabled by year's end. Referring to the decline of paper checks generally and the way in which image exchange is expected to replace the physical transportation of transit items, Braat said, “We will not be the last bank on the plane.” SVPCO's Image Payments Network, which recently introduced automated settlement capability (Digital Transactions News, Aug. 18), has so far brought six financial institutions live on its image-exchange system. The company is owned by The Clearing House, a consortium of 22 banks, which control 60% of the nation's check volume. The CheckImage conference is co-sponsored by The Bank Administration Institute and the Electronic Check Clearing House Organization (ECCHO).