As part of its vision to help customers deploy an agile enterprise payments infrastructure, US Dataworks (Amex: UDW), today announced a patent-pending distributed payments capture solution that is designed to be significantly more efficient and cost-effective than typical remote deposit capture products.
The solution, which leverages the US Dataworks Clearingworks platform, provides a method to capture payments remotely and send the images and data to a centralized processing system for repair, balancing, and deposit. This approach eliminates the need for a PC to drive the remote capture device, requires minimal hardware and software setup, and less employee training and user interaction than other methods of payment capture.
"It's undeniable that remote capture is playing an increasingly important role in payments processing. Our distributed capture approach enables companies to build their enterprise infrastructure to help them not only minimize costs and improve employee productivity today, but also prepare them for the electronic payments mechanisms they'll be using tomorrow," said US Dataworks President Mario Villarreal. "With this solution, we are realizing and expanding upon our vision to create a seamless framework to integrate and streamline many of the costly and time-consuming steps inherent in payments processing."
Typical remote deposit capture requires users to utilize a desktop scanner that is connected to a PC or network. The PC must have a client or Web-enabled interface that operators utilize to operate the desktop scanner to capture images of the front and back of payments. While this configuration is far more efficient than taking daily trips to the bank to make deposits, it also introduces several potential issues for users, including: significant upfront and ongoing operator training; scanner interface requirements; onerous image repair and the potential for additional errors; potential duplicate check scanning; and the need to validate image quality.
US Dataworks believes that by delivering an innovative out-of-the-box distributed payments capture solution, it can resolve these issues and break down the remaining obstacles to remote deposit capture adoption. The new solution utilizes a capture device pre-configured with an identifier that maps to a centralized payments processing system; operators can begin scanning as soon as the device is connected. With this approach, users can scan retail or remittance items directly into the capture device, without the use of a Web or client-based interface. US Dataworks currently is evaluating capture devices that support this approach at market acceptable price points.
As they are imaged, checks are endorsed or marked as scanned to reduce duplicate scanning, and are temporarily stored for research for a pre-determined time; images and data are sent to a centralized payments processing system for automated repair and balancing. Once image repair and balancing is completed, an automated duplicate-item check takes place, and then an ACH, Check 21 or all-item file (for clearing/reconciliation by another system) is created for deposit. Reports are made available via the Web from the centralized payments system.
In addition to eliminating the requirements for a PC at the point of capture, this breakthrough distributed-capture solution can deliver significant benefits compared to typical remote capture:
- Reduced capture device setup
- Reduced operator training
- No data-entry at the point-of-capture
- Less potential of duplicate items
- Ensured image quality
- Streamlined support for banks that offer remote capture to their clients
"Our innovative distributed capture approach demonstrates US Dataworks' commitment to using advanced technologies and processes to meet the requirements of our most demanding clients and to provide maximum long-term customer value and agility," said Yolanda Sanchez, US Dataworks product manager. "This new solution is designed to solve the challenges that banks and billers face with remote deposit capture and provide a much higher return on investment."
Targeted initially to billers with multiple payment presentment points -- including retailers, insurers and mutual funds/brokerage firms -- the US Dataworks solution also is well suited for consumer remote deposit capture since it doesn't require costly check scanning devices.
US Dataworks is currently looking for a beta customer for the new distributed capture solution.