Viewpointe Picks up Image Settlement with Its PaymentsNation Deal

Viewpointe Archive Services LLC, operator of both an electronic check-image archive as well as an image-exchange network, on Monday announced it is entering the business of check-image settlement with the acquisition of PaymentsNation, a Dallas-based company that until recently was known as National Clearing House. The deal, for which terms were not announced, also positions Viewpointe to participate for the first time in NACHA, the rules-setting body for the automated clearing house network. And it brings new resources and fresh technology to PaymentsNation, says Glenn Wheeler, PaymentsNation's chief executive. “Their technology expertise is very well known and respected in the industry,” Wheeler says of Viewpointe, which is owned by Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., SunTrust Corp., and Wells Fargo Co., as well as IBM Corp., and maintains offices in New York City and two other cities. “The technology of Viewpointe in [image] share and archiving is very complementary to what we've done in [check] settlement and the relationship we have with NACHA.” A key benefit to Viewpointe is that the deal hands it an image-settlement capability to go with its image-clearing and archiving technologies. Other than an automated settlement product Viewpointe launched in February with PaymentsNation, the network operator lacks a settlement function. The acquisition of PaymentsNation “advances our goal of becoming an end-to-end clearing and settlement facility for our customers,” says Diane Scott, chief sales, marketing, and product officer at Viewpointe. She says Viewpointe will be exploring over the coming months ways in which it might extend that settlement facility, mentioning settlement services for correspondent banks as an example. Acquiring PaymentsNation as a settlement provider would also seem to make sense from a financial perspective for Viewpointe. PaymentsNation provides settlement services for other image-exchange networks, but Viewpointe's share of its volume has grown to the extent that it now accounts for 60% of all of PaymentsNation's volume, Wheeler says. About one-quarter of that volume is paper-based rather than image, he adds. In image clearing alone, PaymentsNation settled 742.4 million items in the first quarter, the latest period for which numbers are available, up 48% over the first quarter of 2007. Images now account for about half of the company's volume. Beyond that advantage, Viewpointe picks up a voice in NACHA through PaymentsNation, which is a voting member of NACHA. National Clearing House merged with Payments Resource One, a regional ACH association, in April 2007 to become PaymentsNation. For PaymentsNation, the deal has the potential to bring fresh capital to the company's efforts in developing new products, says Wheeler, a sentiment with which Scott agrees. “PaymentsNation will now have the strength of Viewpointe's 90-person team and resources behind them,” she says. PaymentsNation, which serves just under 600 member financial institutions, has been researching mobile banking and payments through efforts with both NACHA and the Financial Services Technology Consortium, an organization of banks that studies new technology. “It's still in the exploratory stage right now,” says Wheeler. The company is also working on new fraud-mitigation products, he adds, where Viewpointe's technology and resources could prove useful. These products include anti-fraud measures for check image and ACH but also for mobile payments, he says. No date has yet been determined for the closing. “There are some specific terms we've got to work through,” says Scott without elaborating, though she adds a date will be set soon. Says Wheeler: “We're working aggressively to satisfy the few remaining issues.”