Manual cheque clearing and its associated problems are soon to be eliminated in Jordan, thanks to ProgressSoft's innovative electronic cheque clearing solution (PS-ECC), which was selected by The Central Bank of Jordan in June. At Sibos 2004 in Atlanta, ProgressSoft is demonstrating the solution with HP, and the two have entered into a strategic partnership to market and implement the solution in the European and North American markets.
ProgressSoft won the tender in Jordan against four international conglomerates in the field of banking technology, as it did in Qatar back in 2001, making Qatar the world's first country to adopt a nationwide solution for electronic image-based cheque clearing.
Majid Laboudi, a director of Banking Technology at HP, says: "After examining the live implementation of PS-ECC in The State of Qatar, we are now strong believers in ProgressSoft’s cheque clearing solution. And by pulling our forces together, we aim to contribute substantially to the Check 21 Act."
In the United States, the Check Clearing Act for the 21st Century (Check 21 Act) was signed into law on October 28, 2003, and will become effective on October 28, 2004. Check 21 is designed to foster innovation in the payments system and to enhance its efficiency by reducing some of the legal impediments to cheque truncation. The law facilitates cheque truncation by creating a new instrument called a substitute cheque, which would permit banks to truncate original cheque, to process cheque information electronically, and to deliver substitute cheques to banks that want to continue receiving paper checks. A substitute cheque would be the legal equivalent of the original cheque and would include all the information contained on the original cheque.
40 billion cheques are written in the United States each year. The banking industry says the new cheque and document-processing changes that Check 21 will usher in and will save billions of dollars that financial institutions now have to spend. Estimates show that for every dollar spent in processing a cheque, 20 to 40 cents is spent on transportation. The average cheque is physically handled a dozen times.
In a little time over a decade, ProgressSoft has managed to become the paramount banking technology provider in the Middle East, as well as the world leader in electronic image-based cheque clearing. After Qatar and Jordan, PS-ECC is soon to be implemented regionally in several states on an international level. It is the only viable option on the lists of many countries in East Asia, Africa, and the Americas.