Following Synovus, Viewpointe Expects More Banks to Sign Soon

Viewpointe Archive Services, a check-image archive and exchange owned by some of the nation's largest banks, has signed its second client for its non-archive exchange service, called Pointe2Pointe. Columbus, Ga.-based Synovus Financial Corp., a holding company for 41 southeastern banks, follows Compass Bank, which signed up with Viewpointe early last month. “We're seeing quite a bit of interest in the Pointe2Pointe service,” says a spokeswoman for Viewpointe in an e-mail to Digital Transactions News. “I'd say you'll be hearing a few more announcements like this later this summer/early fall.” Pointe2Pointe is Viewpointe's image-exchange, which allows banks to swap digital check images with other banks for settlement but doesn't include the company's mainline service, a massive archive of 18 billion check images that allows paying banks to call up images as needed for settlement in a system known as image on demand. Some potential clients, Viewpointe says, want to trade images in a network but don't want to participate in a common archive. Most of these banks have recently built their own archives and haven't fully depreciated them yet, the company says. The Viewpointe spokeswoman says the option is open to banks using Pointe2Pointe, but not the common archive, to begin using the image-on-demand service later on. She adds that Viewpointe expects “in the near future” to build links to other national image-exchange networks, including Endpoint Exchange, Oklahoma City, and a network built by the Federal Reserve. Viewpointe's members include banking giants such as Bank of America, HSBC Bank USA, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., National City Corp., U.S. Bancorp, and Wells Fargo.