Electronic Checks

The automated clearing house system will account for more than one-fifth of all consumer bill payments by 2007, thanks to dramatic growth in the conversion of checks sent to billers' lockboxes into electronic ACH transactions, according to a new study from consulting firm TowerGroup, Needham, Mass. This conversion, known as …

Sovereign Bank has renewed a merchant-processing contract with First Data Corp., the Denver-based processor has announced. The five-year deal represents an extension of Sovereign Merchant Services, which was established in 2001 as one of a number of alliance agreements First Data has concluded with banks in which FDC provides merchant-transaction …

Viewpointe Archive Services LLC became the latest image-exchange venture to go live today when First Horizon and SunTrust Banks became the first banks to clear checks through the service. Earlier this fall, the Small Value Payments Co., New York, began moving check images for client banks, and Endpoint Exchange Inc., …

Return rates on accounts receivable check conversions are dropping despite the rapid clip at which the volume of these electronic payments is climbing, new data from the National Automated Clearing House indicate. The ARC category of ACH debit, created in March 2002, has gone from 5.3 million transactions in the …

Electronic transactions in the U.S. now exceed check payments for the first time, while checks have gone from 57% of all non-cash payments to 45% in only three years, according to a Federal Reserve System report released today. There were 44.5 billion electronic payment transactions in the U.S. last year, …

There are 25 million people in the U.S. who have a regular income but don't have a bank account, says Vero Financial Group, Lake Oswego, Ore., and now the 2-year-old company has developed a card-based, biometric system to cash checks for this market that cuts transaction time and cost while …

Image exchange will account for 93% of all transit checks by 2010, marginalizing what are now some highly popular forms of electronic check conversion, including the fastest-growing form of e-check, account receivable conversion (ARC), according to new projections from Celent Communications. The New York-based research firm says today's nascent image-exchange …

Fraud losses will total $2.6 billion in 2004 for Internet merchants, 37% higher than last year, with smaller merchants suffering the worst fraud. That's according to the sixth annual survey of online fraud from CyberSource Corp., a Mountain View, Calif.-based transaction gateway for e-commerce sites. The survey, which gathered responses …

The fledgling networks that traffic electronic check images rather than paper checks are looking for bigger volumes now that the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act, popularly known as Check 21, has finally become law. “Now everyone's jumping on the bandwagon,” says Mark Craig, general manager of Endpoint Exchange, …

The automated clearing house is handling more electronic transactions than ever, though growth in its electronic check category is showing signs of cooling off. The National Automated Clearing House Association reports the ACH network interchanged almost 2.1 billion transactions among financial institutions overall in the third quarter, the first time …