Headlines:
Fiserv Plans Seal to Guard IRDs
Fiserv Inc. plans to use a digital seal to validate image replacement documents that it produces under the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act, an executive says.
The seal, meant to protect against forgery or alteration of a substitute check, will be available Oct. 28, when the law takes effect, said Ted Umhoefer, the senior vice president of product management and industry relations in Fiserv's item processing group.
"How are banks going to prove that these substitute checks are legitimate?" Mr. Umhoefer asked. "The typical security features that you put on a check have no meaning on a substitute check - a watermark, for instance."
The Fiserv seal, an encoded graphic similar to a bar code, will appear in the legend portion of an image replacement document, to the left of the check image. It will contain data from the check's magnetic ink character recognition line and information on the truncating and re-converting banks.
It is based on technology from the British security-software firm EnSeal Systems Ltd.
Fiserv plans to use the seal to embed information on the production date of the substitute check and where it was produced, Mr. Umhoefer said. "It has been proven to survive imaging very well," he said.
Fiserv, of Brookfield, Wis., plans to license the technology to other producers of image replacement documents, Mr. Umhoefer said.
For more than two years it has offered similar seals to provide positive-pay information, such as the check amount and payee name, on corporate checks. This information can be hidden in a graphic image or decorative border on the check, to guard against check fraud. Positive-pay information also can be included in the IRD seal, according to EnSeal.
Scanning Swift for Laundering
Carreker Corp. says it is enhancing some software to monitor Swift messages for clues to money laundering.
The Dallas company, which sells payments software and consulting services, said it plans to add features to its Carreker Online Risk Expert suite.
In mid-November it should be available for users of Core AML Filter, said Tony Kaus, the company's senior manager for anti-money-laundering products. Core AML Filter compares account and transaction information against the "watch lists" maintained by the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control and other public and private databases.
It will also be part of Core Fraud Manager AML, a transaction monitoring system that is to begin beta testing this year.
Bankers have been working for several years to compare account information automatically against the Treasury and similar lists, Mr. Kaus said. Now "they're getting the message from regulators that they need an automated method to monitor transactions as well," he said.
Becoming a registered partner in a program run by Swift, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, enabled Carreker to integrate Swift's messaging standards into its software.
"We're able to get much more granular in detecting activity that might be money laundering," he said. "There's a lot of detailed information available. The filter is able to look at all of that information very rapidly."
