The CheckAlt Blog

CheckAlt is the engine that powers payment processing for thousands of financial institutions and businesses across the United States. As such, you may be curious to know what’s actually running "Under the Hood." In this new series, we detail CheckAlt's products and services that are accelerating digital transformation for our clients today, as well as the payments solution innovation our Product Team is building in the race toward a faster-payments future.

The death of the branch has been talked about for decades. Bank and credit union branches have been closing at an accelerating rate, now made worse by public health, social, and economic challenges. At its core, however, there are deep-seated emotions attached to money which require trust—and trust is more easily established through human interaction. 

In this fourth and final installment in our series covering the capabilities of Payment Case Manager (PCM)—the only end-to-end tool for secure communication of payment disputes (read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3)—the focus shifts from the features of PCM and its advantages to FIs of all sizes and types to how PCM can interact with other systems. The more PCM interconnects with third-party systems, the more positively impactful PCM’s level of automation and subsequent cost savings becomes.

This is the third in a series of articles on how Payment Case Manager (PCM) securely automates payments disputes. If you have not already read the first two articles, you can read them here and here. Let’s turn our attention to how PCM positively affects small banks and credit unions.

Now that we have identified the root cause of the $96 million problem affecting financial institutions across the U.S., as noted in my previous article, let’s explore how Payment Case Manager (PCM) provides financial institutions with the ability to safely automate payment disputes.  

Imagine a scenario in which there are thousands of individual businesses that are in the same industry, some of which are small mom and pop shops; others are giant Fortune 500 members. Periodic disputes ensue within this industry involving a client of one business having an issue with the client of another business, and the only way for these disputes to be resolved is for the two businesses to exchange non-public information about their clients. However, there is no secure system to which all of these businesses are connected so faxes become the only secure method that these thousands of businesses can communicate. The manual effort needed on either end to create, transmit, process, and remediate disputes seems nearly impossible to eliminate, plus there are operating rules governing the process with increasing fines for substantial non-compliance.

The postal delays and security concerns heightened in 2020 have further driven tens of millions of consumers across the U.S. to choose to pay homeowner’s association dues, tuition fees, trash bills, and other one-time or recurring payments to billers electronically instead of by check.

Automation of paper claims-related business payments among U.S. healthcare providers—combined with adoption of electronic payment methods including online portals—has the potential to save providers at least $9.9 billion annually, as predicted by the 2019 CAQH Index report, which has identified increasing industry cost savings opportunities for three years in a row. To help healthcare providers realize this significant savings opportunity, CheckAlt recently enhanced its healthcare lockbox processing service by forming a strategic partnership with RMS to deliver leading revenue cycle management that uses automation to accelerate cash flow.

CheckAlt is delighted to announce the release of CaptureNet Management 3.0, the latest version of CheckAlt’s hub for all capture channels from ATM to branch to mobile device. Our IT Team has improved the overall performance and functionality of this product including single sign-on and private-label capabilities, multi-factor authentication, and customizable permissions—all presented within a fresh, streamlined web interface.

At CheckAlt, I have the privilege of working as the relationship manager for banks of all sizes. Our goal is to make sure their payment processing and treasury management needs are met. One of the mid-sized financial institutions we serve recently told me that their business is booming—a sentiment I’ve heard from several of our clients.

People are not visiting bank branches like they did before the pandemic, leading financial institutions of all sizes to consider speeding up plans for shutting branches down and scaling digital solutions.

As CheckAlt expands its online and card payments services in response to payments convergence, we remain known in the industry as a leading independent provider of lockbox services in the United States. Our network of 13 lockbox processing centers allows our customers to do business nationwide. In order to operate such a vast network, CheckAlt has attracted and retained a talented lockbox and treasury management team made up of individuals who know the ins and outs of this industry. In this article, we explore one of the lesser known lockbox payment types and how CheckAlt’s solution addresses its complexity.

While some ATM users associate the equipment as a relic of a past generation such as pay phones, ATM technology has evolved in exciting ways to support the needs of financial institution customers through lower costs and increased security. 

In this time of payments convergence when electronic is surpassing paper, application programming interfaces (APIs) are important and powerful mechanisms that can facilitate unified connectivity across a host of digital banking tools. Some banks are embracing APIs and open banking—a concept referring to using open APIs that allow third parties to develop inter-connectivity between data sources—while others are stuck delivering solutions in isolation from each other. Truly transformational services, like those provided by CheckAlt, are delivered in coordination, allowing banks to break away from operational bottlenecks.

When CheckAlt acquired ERAS from Diebold Nixdorf five years ago, the deal catapulted our mobile capture and electronic check processing business to new heights. ERAS provided us with the infrastructure to service banks at a larger scale with a full suite of item processing solutions, and since 2014 we have continued to invest in innovative, secure, and compliant technology.