A deal with Alogent Corp. may make NetBank Inc. of Atlanta among the first Internet banks to offer an image-based remote deposit service to corporate customers.
NetBank plans to start offering the service in August. Alogent, of Alpharetta, Ga., will provide the scanning and processing software.
The deal, announced Monday, could go a long way toward eliminating one of the biggest drawbacks to Web banking: having to mail in deposits. Business customers will be able to convert paper checks they receive into electronic files they can transmit to the bank.
Sonja Kennedy, the bank's vice president of operations, said that will eliminate delays of as long as 10 days.
Vijay Balakrishnan, Alogent's executive vice president of marketing, said NetBank will have the advantage of being able to go "after merchants for check transactions anywhere in the country."
Several other banks, including Bank of America and First Tennessee Bank, offer similar services, and NetBank's competitors may be developing them.
Traditional retail bankers have said customers are interested in saving time through remote capture of deposits even if there is a branch just around the corner. The technology could also enable ordinary banks to pursue corporate customers in markets where they have no branches.
Some automated teller machines, including the ImageWay ATMs from Diebold Inc. of North Canton, Ohio, are already running the Alogent software. But NetBank has no plan to put it in ATMs now, Ms. Kennedy said.
Alenka Grealish, who manages the banking group at the market research firm Celent Communications LLC in Boston, said the remote-capture service could open up a new market for NetBank.
Gwenn Bezard, a Celent senior analyst, said some businesses might switch to NetBank just to avoid a short trip to a branch.
Ms. Grealish said remote-capture deposit services are neither new nor unique to Internet banking. And community banks, which she once said could be threatened by corporate-customer check scanning, may also wind up offering it, she said.
"Community banks don't just sit on their hands, Ms. Grealish said. "They can play this game too."
NetBank's Ms. Kennedy said the benefits go beyond saving time. The service will enable NetBank to become "a leader in payments processing," she said.
It may also benefit consumers, she said. Though they will still have to get deposits to NetBank by mail or through ATMs, once the checks arrive in at Atlanta they clear faster, because they will be scanned and processed electronically.
Mr. Bezard said the Alogent technology will give NetBank an initial edge, because many large banks are not ready to offer similar services. But Ms. Grealish said the service may not be enough to woo the new customers NetBank needs to become a market leader.
"It just gets them in the game," she said. "It doesn't really give them any winner's advantage."
