PR - Fiserv Launches Consumer Remote Deposit Capture Product

CheckFree, now part of Fiserv Inc. (NASDAQ: FISV), a leading provider of information technology services to the financial industry, today unveiled its new remote deposit capture product, an innovative solution that allows retail customers to electronically scan and deposit checks from any location with a PC, a scanner and an Internet connection. 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.