SunTrust Banks Inc. has begun testing an "image integrity" service offered by Viewpointe LLC, which says other financial companies are expected to begin using the service soon.
Diane Scott, Viewpointe's chief sales, marketing, and product officer, said a number of banking companies have expressed interest in the service, which verifies that individual check images are matched with the correct "metadata."
Mismatches, which typically occur during sorter jams, could cause an incorrect image to be presented during an online banking session or printed for inclusion with a monthly statement, Viewpointe said when it started offering the service in February.
Ms. Scott said in an interview last week that customer interest "speaks to the industry's demand for image integrity."
Viewpointe, which also operates a shared check-image archive and settlement system, disclosed its image-clearing volume for the first time, saying the number of items participating banks cleared last month rose 38% from a year earlier, to 269 million. The total includes images shared among the 11 large banks that use the archive, as well as those exchanged through the Pointe2Pointe service for banks that do not store images with Viewpointe.
The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC said this month that May volume on its SVPCO Image Payments Network grew 103.7%, to 444 million images.
Ms. Scott said Viewpointe plans to make regular disclosures about volume in the future. "We're doing our best to keep it top of mind for the industry."
Other networks, including those operated by the Federal Reserve Board and Metavante Technologies Inc., typically do not disclose their volume publicly but report them to the Electronic Check Clearing House Organization, the Dallas rulemaker for image exchange.
