The Federal Reserve said it has entered into a contract with Viewpointe to provide it with image exchange services for the 12 Federal Reserve banks, the nation's largest processors of interbank check payments.
The deal will allow Viewpointe's bank and credit union customers to send and receive check images with any financial institution in the country. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Viewpointe, one of four major check exchange networks, is owned by Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, SunTrust Banks, U.S. Bancorp and IBM Corp.
Separately, SVPCO-Electronic Clearings Services, one of the competing check exchange networks, reported its average number of daily items exchanged grew to 1.7 million in April as 12 major banks are now participating in what was created from a conglomeration of regional check exchanges.
Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and U.S. Bancorp are also among the 21 banks that own SVPCO. The other competitors are Metavante's Endpoint Exchange Network and Fiserv Clearing Network.
Ed Roberts can be reached at robertscuj
