Electronic Checks

Image exchange and image clearing kicked into a higher gear in January, with more than half a billion items flowing through image-exchange networks for the first time. Just over two years since the Check Clearing Act for the 21st Century (Check 21) became effective, the volume of checks converted to …

10 Tipping Points for the Payments Industry Part 8 From the way alternative-payment options are treated by the big players in the electronic- payments industry, you would think these options carried infectious diseases. Not long ago, a payments executive on the treasury side of a major national retailer lamented that …

Some 16% of community banks offer remote deposit capture of checks to business customers, and nearly one-third of these say they have adopted the electronic check technology as “an essential survival strategy,” according to a survey released on Monday by the American Bankers Association. At the same time, 65% of …

Image clearing of check payments is nearing 60% of all image-exchange volume, while the total volume of paper substitute-check volume cleared is now falling for the first time, lending credence to arguments by industry observers that conversion to end-to-end image clearing is proceeding more quickly than some bankers had thought. …

A new point-of-sale payment option that converts checks to electronic debits, available starting next month, will open the retailer market for remote deposit capture, a leading payments executive says. The new option, called back-office conversion (BOC), allows merchants to scan consumer checks in bulk and process them through the automated …

A sweepingly ambitious, nearly year-long effort to speed up end-to-end electronic processing of checks has been shut down by its organizers, the victim of multiple operational complications that proved in the end too hard to overcome. The Check-ACH Coalition, a group of some 65 financial institutions, trade groups, and vendors, …

Banks' efforts to rid ATM deposits of pesky?and costly?envelopes took a step forward on Tuesday with Wells Fargo & Co.'s announcement that it plans to add 825 new machines by year's end that will accept deposits without envelopes. Wells will deploy some 150 of the new ATMs, which allow customers …

Statistics released on Monday indicate the trafficking of electronic check images among banks took big strides in 2006. With December numbers in, The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC, New York, which operates the nation's largest image-exchange network, reported its volume last year totaled 747 million images, representing $2 trillion in …

CheckFree Corp.'s agreement to buy Dallas-based banking-software vendor Carreker Corp., announced Tuesday, will help extend the bill-payment processor's reach into the business of electronic check image exchange, including the fast-growing remote capture market. It could also position CheckFree to exploit opportunities arising from the possible convergence of the automated clearing …

The formerly somnolent point-of-purchase (POP) electronic-check code continued on its newfound burst of energy in the third quarter, according to the latest automated clearing house volume report from NACHA?The Electronic Payments Association. NACHA reports POP volume hit 80.5 million transactions, up 92.8% from 41.8 million in the year-earlier quarter. POP's …