It is the first commercially available remote deposit product that is integrated with Intuit's QuickBooks software, which is currently in use by more than 3 million small businesses in North America.

Previous versions of BankServ's popular DepositNow! system – already used by more than a thousand businesses across the lower 48 states – let users feed paper checks into a scanner and deposit them into a bank account from an ordinary desktop or laptop PC, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. With the addition of a QuickBooks interface, the software also automatically matches payments to invoices and keeps users’ books balanced. Later this year, BankServ will introduce versions of DepositNow! that integrate with other widely used accounting programs such as Microsoft Money and Peachtree.

After a 60-day pilot program for customers of three major banks on the East Coast, DepositNow! A/R is scheduled for release to the general public in early September. The new offering will be available either directly through BankServ or through banks acting as distributors - but will be capable of depositing checks into any U.S. bank account, regardless of whether or not the bank is a distributor.

"Depositing checks right from the office is a huge time- and cost-saver for potentially millions of small businesses," said David F. Kvederis, BankServ's president and CEO. "By also reducing the amount of time it takes to balance accounting records, DepositNow! A/R will build momentum for increased acceptance of remote deposit. This product could be what convinces many businesses that it’s time to make the transition."

DepositNow! is an inexpensive, easy-to-use program that utilizes Optical Character Recognition OCR/MICR scanning technology to capture digital images of checks and use them for an electronic deposit, a practice permitted since 2004 by the Check Clearing for the 21st Century (Check 21) Act. Besides cutting down on trips to the bank for the businesses that use it, remote deposit also greatly reduces the amount of paperwork that the banks have to process in order to clear checks, a fact that BankServ is betting will eventually make the new technology as widespread as past innovations like Direct Deposit or ATM machines.

"Banks spend millions of dollars processing checks, but clearing an electronic check can be done for a fraction of the cost of handling a paper one. The technology will catch on once banks realize that every electronic check they receive saves them money," Kvederis said. "It wasn't surprising to see a recent Independent Community Bankers of America survey that said only 4 percent of banks offer remote deposit products today, but more than 40 percent plan to within the next two years."

DepositNow! A/R was designed with backward compatibility to work with QuickBooks 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, and QuickBooks Online, and can be run on any Windows 2000 or newer operating system.