The National Clearing House Association said its check image volume rose 56.1% in the third quarter compared with the second quarter.
The Dallas clearing house said it handled 137.5 million images worth $112.7 billion. NCHA settles image payments for Viewpointe Archive Services LLC and Metavante Corp.'s Endpoint Exchange, two of the largest image-exchange networks.
The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC, which operates a third network, SVPCO Image Payments Network, has also reported strong growth. It reported this month image volume of 99 milion items in October, up 23.4% from September.
In the first nine months of this year NCHA settled 260.6 million images worth $191.1 billion. It said that its October total of 98.4 million images accounted for 18% of the total number of all checks settled last month.
Glenn Wheeler, NCHA's president and chief executive, said in a press release: "We've seen a rapid increase in image volumes as billions of dollars worth of transactions are converted to imaged check, not only within NCHA, but across the industry. The shift to image is gaining ground as more financial institutions implement the necessary means to handle image transactions."
