Really—Banks Are Still Interested in Lockbox?
Written by CheckAlt
CheckAlt Launches “CheckAlt Go!” Package
LOS ANGELES, Calif. - May 5, 2019 — Money is not as digital as you may think. Just as we were told decades ago that everyone would have their own flying car by now, the sparkle of innovation has distracted us from an important truth in the financial services industry: the death of the paper check still has not happened.
Though payments convergence did in fact occur in 2012 with the Federal Reserve reporting that electronic payment volumes finally surpassed paper as the dominant payment method in the United States, check volumes have not dropped at the steady clip many expected. In fact, the number of check payments made in the U.S. held relatively steady between 2014 and 2016, dropping just slightly in the past two years to a still enormous 16 billion. At the same time, the value of paper check payments has increased six percent overall since 2012.
Despite this fact, lockbox services had become less alluring to financial institutions. For some banks, even outsourcing became expensive. Historically, banks lost interest in lockbox services for two reasons:
- 1. Financial institutions were not able to justify the cost of financing lockbox services, which typically involves complex pricing with pages of line items.
- 2. Smaller financial institutions relied on remote deposit capture (RDC) to manage customer payments.
In a market where 16 billion paper payments need to be processed, combined with mounting pressure from corporate clients to provide end-to-end solutions, lockbox has become relevant again. The problem of paper checks has not gone away.
The solution for financial institutions is CheckAlt Go!, a lockbox services package that removes barriers to entry for lockbox processing and makes it easy for financial institutions to both accept paper payments and convert them to electronic. Our simplified pricing model involves no monthly minimums—just $2,500 to get started, with a 99¢ per item fee and $2,000 annually for maintenance.
CheckAlt Go! is suitable for smaller financial institutions with lower, but growing, payment volume, allowing them to easily capture additional payment documents and data, automate reconciliation, and import files into accounting enterprise resource planning software for their customers. CheckAlt’s team can procure mailboxes in minutes and set up new lockboxes in as little as seven days. As part of the CheckAlt Go! package, CheckAlt’s team also helps financial institutions penetrate volume with marketing materials to sell the service to their customers.
If your financial institution is ready to provide CheckAlt Go! for your customers, please contact CheckAlt’s Co-Chairman and CEO Shai Stern directly at 917-597-3107 or sstern@checkalt.com.
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About CheckAlt
In the past 10 years, CheckAlt has become the leading provider of check payment processing solutions for hundreds of financial institutions across the country. As both bank agnostic and demographic agnostic, CheckAlt is uniquely positioned for payments convergence. It has been our focus to process check payments while also eliminating paper from the system with robust electronic payment APIs. CheckAlt’s solutions include lockbox processing across a nationwide hub-and-spoke network of processing sites, consolidated item processing, integrated treasury solutions, and mobile capture services. CheckAlt is headquartered in Los Angeles, Calif.
For interviews, please contact CheckAlt’s Head of Communications Tiffany Rider at trider@checkalt.com.
