Carreker Corporation (NASDAQ:CANI), a leading provider of technology and consulting solutions for the financial industry, announced today that they have developed a duplicate IRD protection solution, Payment/Guard that provides financial institutions with advanced protection against double postings of Image Replacement Documents (IRDs).
After the Check Clearing Act for the 21st Century (Check 21) took effect October 28, 2004, banks were no longer required to have access to original checks for collection and settlement, but could use substitute checks (also known as IRDs) and images instead.
Financial institutions are currently creating hundreds of thousands of IRDs daily, with these volumes expected to continue to grow. A number of production control situations can cause duplicate IRDs to inadvertently be introduced to a financial institution, resulting in possible double postings, increased operational costs, and customer service issues.
Payment/Guard prevents these double postings by detecting duplicate IRDs prior to posting. The solution interfaces to a bank's existing capture system to identify and store IRDs received by the bank as part of inclearings or Proof of Deposit (POD) work. As each new IRD is processed, it is compared to previous items to check for duplicates. Detected duplicates are then prevented from being posted to customer accounts.
"With the proliferation of IRDs in the financial services industry, there is a strong likelihood that the number of duplicate IRDs will continue to grow at a rapid rate," said John Carreker, president, Global Payments Technology, Carreker. "Our Payment/Guard solution allows financial institutions to greatly improve customer service and operational efficiencies by providing them with reports that facilitate handling of exceptions, duplicate paper, and re-presentments."
"IRDs are playing a much larger role in the financial services industry than originally predicted," said J.D. (Denny) Carreker, chairman and CEO, Carreker. "Duplicate IRDs have become a growing challenge for financial institutions and as they seek solutions to address this issue, we are pleased to deliver another key component of our convergent payments solutions."
Carreker continued, "For more than 15 years Carreker has offered duplicate protection in Electronic Check Presentment (ECP) check processing and now we have carried that technology forward to include duplicate protection for IRDs. Payment/Guard will serve our clients well as they continue to reap the many benefits brought on by the enactment of Check 21."