During a press conference today at BAI TransPay, Viewpointe, a leading provider of check image exchange and archive services in the United States, unveiled its breakthrough new product, Viewpointe Image Integrity.
Viewpointe Image Integrity is designed specifically to help financial institutions manage the risks associated with check image and data mismatches that can occur during check processing. Viewpointe also announced today that SunTrust will be among the nation's financial institutions that will begin using Viewpointe Image Integrity when the product becomes available mid-year.
Image integrity is defined as the correct match of a check's image and its associated metadata. Mismatches between an image and corresponding data can sometimes occur. These mismatches have negative operational repercussions for a financial institution, and can sometimes even result in a customer data privacy breach. Such breaches are expensive to remediate, can harm customer relationships and brand reputation and diminish trust between image exchange partners.
"We developed Viewpointe Image Integrity in response to demand among our image exchange customers to become more proactive about identifying mismatches," said Kerry Atha, director of Product Management at Viewpointe. "During an 18-month research effort, customers clearly told us they wanted tools to help them mitigate risk and foster greater trust in the image exchange process. Viewpointe Image Integrity will help institutions manage risk inherent in image exchange, and will increase their confidence in the traffic they receive."
The Viewpointe Image Integrity offering will search for mismatched items using a matching routine and logic. The Viewpointe product will also employ a new technology called Optical Character Interrogation which is designed to increase the speed and accuracy of the mismatch identification process. Images that successfully pass Viewpointe's rigorous MICR validation check are given an electronic Viewpointe Integrity Stamp.
The intent of the Viewpointe Image Integrity Stamp is two-fold. First, the stamp signifies that the item has passed through the product's standardized process. As more financial institutions adopt image exchange, they begin exchanging traffic with endpoints that are less familiar to them. Intimately knowing the operational processes of all image-enabled endpoints is not viable, so having a common image integrity process can help build trust among institutions to foster image exchange volume growth.
Second, the Viewpointe Image Integrity Stamp signals another financial institution that an item has already been reviewed by Viewpointe's product, providing institutions the option to eliminate redundant review of an image with the same engine.
"A viable, standard-setting image integrity product like Viewpointe Image Integrity can spur continued adoption of image exchange industry-wide," said Aaron McPherson, practice leader, financial services, at Financial Insights. "Having a single matching routine and logic combination would benefit financial institutions and encourage even more of them to get involved with check electronification and exchange."
The Viewpointe Image Integrity offering is currently in development and will be available to all Viewpointe image exchange customers mid-year. Both Pointe2Pointe and ImageShare customers will be eligible to use this product for their image exchange traffic. Viewpointe has selected Fiserv, Inc. (Nasdaq:FISV), to provide key components for the platform, including decision support, a workflow manager and a reports module. Fiserv is an industry-leading provider of information management and electronic commerce systems and services to the financial and insurance industries.
Viewpointe Image Integrity can help build financial institutions' confidence and peace of mind in the traffic they process, manage their reputational risk and increase trust among image exchange partners.
Automated Settlement Entry
Today Viewpointe also introduced Automated Settlement Entry (ASE), a new product that transmits settlement entries through a direct connection to PaymentsNation (formerly NCHA/PRO) on behalf of Viewpointe Pointe2Pointe and ImageShare customers. ASE leverages the new Viewpointe/PaymentsNation Settlement Exchange to offer a streamlined process for automated settlement and eliminate the need for manual settlement. ASE offers significant benefits to existing Viewpointe customers that currently settle image cash letters through PaymentsNation.