CheckFree ships remote deposit capture product

It provides simple, easy-to-use functionality for the consumer without compromising the security, fraud identification or processing quality required by financial institutions.

Competition in the retail banking market is tremendous and banks must continually seek to offer new and innovative products to attract new consumers and retain existing customers. By providing a convenient, secure and easy-to-use online banking option for depositing checks, financial institutions will offer their customers faster funds availability without a trip to the branch, ATM or post office, thereby enriching the banking experience.

"Consumer capture will fundamentally change the way consumers interact with their financial institution, brokerage firm, utility or other payment processor when depositing checks. By offering consumer capture, financial institutions can quickly provide an online product that will attract new customers without regard to geographic territory; accelerating expansion beyond their brick and mortar branches," said Mike Ringuette, executive vice president, Fiserv Global Payments. "This new solution allows banks, credit unions, other financial institutions and payments processors to offer expanded deposit windows due to the immediate receipt of an electronic image and all associated electronic data, with the potential to reduce costs and environmental resources associated with personnel, transportation and processing in the branch or back office."

Ringuette explained that this solution will allow financial institutions to reduce operating costs and environmental resources associated with branch operations, back office processing and transportation because checks will be submitted and processed electronically. Offering a consumer capture solution can also lower ATM fraud cost, by eliminating empty envelope fraud which accounts for more than half of all ATM deposit fraud, according to a 2006 white paper published by ATM manufacturer Diebold. Consumer capture employs sophisticated image and character recognition capabilities in order to read amounts and account information and accurately crop and verify the consumer's check image in an automated fashion.

CheckFree's Remote Deposit Capture for Consumers offering is an Internet solution delivered through existing online banking applications, ensuring widespread customer availability. It uses the financial institution's existing online banking portal, leveraging existing security methods for login IDs, passwords and data encryption during image and data transfer. The solution can support any generic (TWAIN) scanner, allowing consumers to take advantage of their existing scanner hardware. Consumer capture can be installed as a new remote deposit capture (RDC) product or integrated as an add-on with any existing RDC solution used by the bank.

"Security and convenience are driving consumers to seek new and innovative service offerings to enhance their banking experience. In the race to entice and retain retail customers, the ability to offer consumers a low-cost, simple method for remote deposit capture will provide an advantage for banks looking to differentiate themselves," said Bob Meara, senior analyst, Celent. "Celent anticipates targeted but significant adoption of consumer capture solutions over the next three years."

"This groundbreaking new product is part of Fiserv's commitment to providing our clients with innovative solutions designed to meet present and future needs," said Tom Warsop, group president, Financial Institutions, Fiserv, Inc. "Banks have successfully used Fiserv and CheckFree remote deposit capture products with their corporate customers for quite some time now. Now the consumer is demanding that same convenience. The collaboration between our Fiserv and CheckFree teams allowed us to develop and quickly bring to market this easy-to-use consumer-friendly product that has the potential to change the face of consumer banking."