Frost National Bank of San Antonio, which has become an imaging innovator by working with several exchange networks - even creating one of its own - said it would join one more, Endpoint Exchange.
David Rathke, the senior vice president for float management at the Cullen/Frost Bankers Inc. unit, said Wednesday in an interview that it has also been exchanging images since January with banks in the shared archive run by Viewpointe Archive Services LLC.
Joining Endpoint would let Frost increase its image volume quickly, Mr. Rathke said. "This gave us the opportunity to get to a large number of smaller financial institutions with one connection. Our goal is to move as quickly as possible with as many partners as possible."
Marshall & Ilsley Corp.'s Metavante Corp. of Milwaukee operates Endpoint, which has more than 4,000 member companies.
So far Frost has exchanged only test files over the Endpoint network, and Mr. Rathke said he hopes to be live on it next quarter.
Jeff Vetterick, the general manager of Endpoint Exchange, said Frost, with its extensive correspondent business, will bring new volume to the exchange and boost the adoption of check imaging.
"They're not the largest bank in the country," Mr. Vetterick said, "but they're in the top 20 in terms of their image savviness, their image readiness. They're ready to do everything."
Many major banking companies have concentrated on using a single image network. For example, Fifth Third Bancorp is using the SVPCO Image Payments Network run by The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC as its primary connection, while SunTrust Banks Inc. is concentrating on image sharing with other Viewpointe members.
By contrast, the $11.7-billion asset Frost has built a variety of connections. Since March of last year it has been sending image files to the Federal Reserve Banks for the rapid clearing of high-value checks, and Mr. Rathke said it is now sending as much of its work as possible through the Fed to banks that can accept images through the FedReceipt service.
In January, Frost began to use Viewpointe's Pointe2Pointe service to exchange image files, and now it has six trading partners in the Charlotte company's shared archive. Since August of last year it has had a direct connection with Southwest Corporate Federal Credit Union of Dallas to exchange more than 2 million check images a month.
Mr. Rathke would not say how much of Frost's check volume is cleared as images, except to say the percentage is in the double digits.
Aaron McPherson, the research director for payments at Financial Insights Inc., a Framingham, Mass., unit of the Boston technology publisher International Data Group Inc., said using multiple exchange networks could help small banks control their costs.
"Until the networks get interconnected, it gives them the versatility to do direct sends with folks where they do lots of volume," he said.
Each network charges a fee for the files it transmits, so a file that goes over multiple networks can run up multiple fees, Mr. McPherson said. As a result, even with the expense of maintaining multiple connections, "it could still be more cost effective to have connections to each network, depending on how much volume they plan to send."
