Electronic Checks

A new plan at NACHA to merge elements of the automated clearing house network with elements of check imaging could allow banks to clear checks more cost-efficiently but may also turn out to be a solution to a problem that's solving itself, experts say. Some 20 financial institutions, ranging from …

Omaha, Neb.-based RemitPro Inc. is teaming up with payment processor Vanco Services LLC to open up a new category of smaller merchants to the developer of electronic-check software while removing the need for those businesses to change banks. RemitPro produces the eRemitPro data-capture and imaging application used by 150 clients …

The payment gateway business may be consolidating, but smaller players are trying to survive by adding services to meet e-commerce merchants' demand for more diversified payment options than simply credit cards. This week, for example, Los Angeles-based USA ePay announced that it is offering Digital EFT Solutions LLC's DEFT Deposit …

In a sign of the spreading popularity of remote deposit capture among U.S. businesses, Wachovia Corp.'s treasury services division announced on Monday it had hit $1 billion in remote capture volume for a single day. The Charlotte, N.C.-based regional bank attributed the milestone to the increasing adoption of the technology …

Bank of America Corp.'s announcement this week that more than one-fifth of its deposit-taking ATMs now image checks?and thus don't require deposit envelopes?shows that so-called envelope-less ATMs are starting to catch on with consumers, says an expert observer. “The announcement is significant if only as a sort of marker showing …

Though still growing in volume from month to month, substitute checks now account for only about one-third of total image-exchange traffic between banks, according to the latest industrywide data. By contrast, a year ago these costly paper printouts of check images amounted to 56% of all image-exchange volume. At the …

The U.S Patent and Trademark Office has upheld substantially all of the claims contained in a key patent held by DataTreasury Corp. that covers processes related to check image exchange. The USPTO decision, reached in May but not made public until recently, follows a formal process in which Plano, Texas-based …

Image-exchange networks and the financial institutions that use them to process checks electronically may have to contend with a dwindling supply of checks sooner than they expected. For the time being, the networks are doing a robust business, with the volume of items expected to more than quadruple this year, …

Payment companies devote countless hours and millions of dollars to protecting sensitive customer and payment data from outside computer hackers, but the theft of 2.3 million customer records announced today by check and card processor Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS) shows that employee theft remains a serious?and difficult?problem to …

After years of steadily reducing the number of offices processing checks, the Federal Reserve Banks announced on Tuesday they plan to have just four regional centers providing paper check processing services by March 2011. Since the Fed system began restructuring its check-processing operations in 2003, it has already cut the …