Headlines:
Conversion Eligibility Guidelines
Nacha, the electronic payments association, has published guidelines on its Web site for identifying business checks that are eligible for conversion to automated clearing house transactions.
ACH rules scheduled to take effect Sept. 15 will permit banks to convert business checks into electronic payments, just as they currently do with consumer checks under the accounts receivable conversion format.
The Herndon, Va., trade group said Friday that the information includes a checklist for businesses that may want to convert checks as part of their payment processing; training materials for financial institutions' ACH operations; a question-and-answer document; and a matrix that compares the features and rules for check conversion and check imaging.
The new rules, approved last November, exclude many business checks from conversion, such as 9-inch-wide corporate checks; those that contain an "auxiliary on-us field" in the magnetic ink character recognition line; those for amounts of more than $25,000; and those written by companies that have opted out of the process.
Under current rules, all business checks are ineligible for conversion. Corporate payers said the change would complicate their bookkeeping. It could also thwart some fraud-fighting measures, such as the positive-pay comparison of checks presented for payment to a company's check-issue file, because ACH payment systems typically do not link to check positive-pay systems.
Dime Signs Up for QuickPost
Dime Savings Bank of Williamsburgh in Brooklyn, N.Y., has agreed to use NetBank Inc.'s QuickPost service for deposits and payments.
Financial Technologies Inc., a unit of the Alpharetta, Ga., branchless banking company, announced the deal Thursday with the $3.1 billion-asset thrift, a unit of Brooklyn's Dime Community Bancshares Inc.
The QuickPost service lets people use United Parcel Service Inc. to send checks and cash overnight to a deposit and payment processing center, where the checks can be imaged and the amounts posted to the customers' accounts.
Customers can conduct those transactions at 4,100 UPS Store locations, including 120 in the New York area. (All of Dime's 21 branches are in the New York area.)
Financial Technologies said QuickPost serves more than 4 million customers. Five banking companies have signed up to use it since March 2005.
