Electronic Checks

Use of the automated clearing house for various electronic consumer transactions continued to climb in the first quarter, rising 27% from the fourth quarter of 2003 and 123% over the year-ago period, according to the National Automated Clearing House Association, Herndon, Va. Electronic checks?in which transactions are converted to electronic …

Metavante Corp. announced today it has agreed to buy Advanced Financial Solutions Inc., an Oklahama City-based company specializing in check-processing technology and owner of the Endpoint Exchange, a network that routes electronic check images among processors and financial institutions. No price was announced, though Metavante officials said this acquisition, in …

CheckClear LLC, which owns and operates what is so far the only national image-exchange network in operation for check processing, announced today it is planning to connect to an image exchange being built by the Federal Reserve. It also said it has made an agreement to connect to imaging equipment …

A draft of a new American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard for electronic exchange of checks and check data among banks and processors will be ready for ballot this summer, and could be ready for trial use this year, according to a member of the committee working on the standard. …

Electronic funds transfer network Star Systems Inc., which last month announced a new product that makes use of its EFT network to verify and settle checks written at the point of sale in the same way Star processes debit cards, says it expects Star Chek Direct to begin processing transactions …

With at least four separate efforts under way to build national image-exchange networks, some banking officials are starting to ask whether the substantial investment banks and processors are making in these new networks to carry check images between financial institutions is really necessary. The systems required to achieve transfer of …

While the race is on to hammer together electronic networks to carry what is expected by many to be a huge volume of check images between banks, the only network that has gone live so far reports it is achieving fast growth. Endpoint Exchange, a network owned and operated by …

Bi-Lo LLC, a supermarket chain based in Mauldin, S.C., has announced a biometric-based authentication system has cut its payroll-check fraud losses by 60% since it was installed last fall. The grocer says almost 40,000 customers are now signed up for the system, called Paycheck Secure, and that it has done …

In anticipation of the swelling of check-image volume that Check 21 is expected to unleash, Viewpointe, a national image-exchange network and archive for electronic checks serving 10 banks, has engaged Accenture, a technology-services and consulting firm, to help prepare the company's platform to handle large image-exchange volumes. Viewpointe's archive stores …

The automated clearing house system handled more than 10 billion electronic transactions in 2003, and the conversion of checks into ACH debits helped fuel the growth, according to statistics released today by the National Automated Clearing House Association at its annual conference in Seattle. Total ACH transactions reached 10.017 billion …