SVPCO Gains More Critical Mass As PNC Joins Image-Exchange System

All-electronic check image exchange got a boost this week with the addition of another large regional bank-holding company, Pittsburgh-based The PNC Financial Services Group, to SVPCO-Electronic Clearing Services' image-exchange network. Meanwhile, SVPCO reported today that it processed 3 million average daily items in July, up 17% from June's average. The news follows statistics released earlier indicating all-electronic image exchange across all national networks has reached 43% of total monthly volume, up from 14% a year ago (Digital Transactions News, Aug. 6). Also, the National Clearing House (NCHA), Dallas, which provides settlement services for Endpoint Exchange and Viewpointe Archive Services LLC, two other national image-exchange networks, reported this week that its all-electronic volume reached 123 million items for the first half of the year, up from 44.6 million in the same time last year. All-electronic image exchange involves settlement by paying banks on electronic check images rather than on image-replacement documents (IRDs), which are paper printouts of images. PNC going live brings to 15 the number of active participants in SVPCO's Image Payments Network, the nation's largest national image-exchange network. The other banks are Bank of America, BB&T, Comerica, Fifth Third, HSBC, Huntington National, JPMorgan Chase, KeyBank, LaSalle Bank, M&T Bank, National City, Union Bank of California, Wachovia, and Wells Fargo. Wachovia, Chase, and BofA are generating the most volume, says Susan Long, senior vice president at SVPCO's parent company, New York -based The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC. With the exception of Columbus, Ohio-based Huntington, which went live on the system in June (Digital Transactions News, July 11), all of the live banks are among the network's 22 bank owners. SVPCO also has connections to the Federal Reserve. Long wouldn't predict how much volume PNC will bring to SVPCO, but says, “every time you add a participant to the network, it's like a multiplier” because of the increased ability of all participants to exchange images with each other. Besides an average of 3 million daily items for July, SVPCO reports that the monthly total was 60.2 million, up 6.5% from June. The monthly value was $168 billion, up 6.5% from June. NCHA reported its volume for June, the latest number available, was 33.7 million items with a total value of $25.2 billion. In June 2005, the clearing house handled 2.7 million items worth $962.8 million. Long expects SVPCO's monthly total to hit 100 million by year's end, boosted in part by the expected addition of five more banks to the network.