CheckAlt News

During a call yesterday, I was asked why we chose the name “CheckAlt” for our company. While initially our primary focus was on the processing of paper checks, we soon realized from working with clients like you that we also needed to address all of the alternative forms of payment, such as ACH, cards, and online bill pay checks. Hence the “Alt” in CheckAlt. In the past 10 years, CheckAlt has become the house of payments—from the check to the alt—and we are grateful to provide payment processing solutions for your varying needs.

The opportunities and challenges presented in first half of 2020 resulted in an incredible amount of growth for our organization. Amidst the public health concerns and social unrest, CheckAlt has stayed the course and become the payments “house” by designing, developing, and providing modern check, online bill pay, and card payment processing solutions for you.

I hope you all had a wonderful week. As you may know, on Tuesday I had the great honor of celebrating the union of my son Zvi to his wonderful bride Kayla. The event was a beautiful reminder of the power of human connection and the value of creating a memorable, pleasant experience. Life is about experience, and I will cherish the memories of that day for the rest of my life.

I am delighted to share more positive news with you this week. First, we are proud to announce our partnership with RMS, the leading provider of healthcare remittance management services, to create a joint solution for our healthcare clients to augment our lockbox services nationwide. Read the press release here.

I hope you are well. CheckAlt continues to operate at full capacity in our hybrid mode with employees working in-house and remotely.

CheckAlt’s continued strength during these unprecedented times is reflected in the growing number of opportunities to serve our existing and new clients. We are grateful to serve you.

In these times when it seems no one is certain of anything, Jerry Stiller’s one message to all of us would be: SERENITY NOW!

I hope you all had a great week. This Sunday is Mother’s Day, and I am proud to celebrate the amazing mothers in my family and the many amazing mothers on our CheckAlt team.

As many of us anticipated, new data is showing a spike in remote deposit capture technology usage as financial institutions and businesses operate in a partially or fully virtual way. If you or your customers need assistance processing mail, CheckAlt is here to help as your primary or secondary resource.

We are observing the impacts of systemic USPS mail delivery delays across our nationwide processing network due to USPS staffing shortages. CheckAlt is also seeing USPS mail volumes come in lighter on normally the heaviest days of the week/month (e.g. first Monday of the month), yet come in heavier on other days (e.g. Wednesdays when mail is usually much lighter). This is in addition to the USPS extension of package service delivery commitments we shared with you on April 17.

I want to reiterate that our team is 100% engaged on processing all work as it comes in. Though USPS response times have slowed due to these systemic delays, we are constantly communicating with our post office contacts and are aware of their efforts to secure additional staffing in areas of heavy USPS call outs.

During Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting, chairman and CEO Warren Buffet said the following: “Fear is the most contagious disease you can imagine. It makes the virus look like a piker.” (A piker is “one who gambles or speculates with small amounts of money.”) We must not let fear derail our focus. I am pleased to report that CheckAlt’s staffing levels have returned to normal as we continue to operate in our hybrid mode of team members social distancing at all of our sites across the U.S. while others work remotely.

Stay healthy and safe, have a great weekend, and happy Mother’s Day!

Shai Stern

I want to start off this week’s update with an uplifting story. We are incredibly proud of our CIO Ram Bajaj for generously giving his time to help lead a food drive in the Los Angeles area, providing bags of groceries to families in need during this challenging time.

This is the first of our now weekly updates to clients during these unprecedented times. I am pleased to share the continued success of CheckAlt’s hybrid approach, which involves those who can work remotely doing so and those needed to assist with processing coming into the office valiantly. Our daily sanitization efforts continue, as well as providing cleaning supplies and masks at our facilities.

Happy Friday. In light of the recent news, I wanted to share the following message with you:

New York, California, and localities across the U.S. have begun to enact temporary restrictions on non-essential business operations, asking millions of people to stay home. We want you to know that CheckAlt is considered essential and is not subject to these temporary restrictions. Our production teams across the country are working diligently to process mail for financial institutions and businesses that power our economy. We are in constant communication with our mail carriers including USPS, which is also considered an essential business and remains operational.

If you are concerned about not being able to pick up mail for your business, CheckAlt is here to help. Whether you are scanning payments using CheckAlt’s remote lockbox or merchant remote deposit capture solutions—or you have customers who are using a different solution—please contact us immediately and we will work with you to direct mail strategically across our nationwide, 13-site processing network.

Stay healthy and safe!

Shai Stern

This week I have been sharing daily updates for clients regarding the status of our operations, what we are hearing from mail carriers, and ways CheckAlt can assist financial institutions and businesses through this trying time.

CheckAlt continues to operate all 13 of our processing centers with optimism and positivity. We are in constant communication with mail carriers and are providing updates to customers who may have been impacted by USPS delays.

As we persist through this situation, we want to help you keep your employees and customers safe. Some of you have chosen to limit public contact by only offering drive-up services at branches or asking customers to use ATMs for deposits. At CheckAlt, we are continuing to support financial institutions and businesses across the country with their mail processing but are also heeding the call for contactless payments as a critical solution.

It is important to encourage customers to do as much mobile and remote banking as possible instead of coming into the branch. In addition to drive-up services and ATM deposits, financial institutions should consider mobile deposit services for consumers and businesses alike. If you need help promoting these services to your customers or would like to start offering remote deposit capture as soon as possible, CheckAlt is here to assist—simply call or email me to discuss.

Stay safe and healthy!

Shai Stern
Co-Chairman and CEO
917-579-3107
sstern@checkalt.com

We at CheckAlt are remaining cautiously optimistic and continue to take necessary precaution to keep our business fully operational. I am happy to report that our employees are healthy and safe, and all processing centers are open (including our San Francisco operation, which is not subject to the “shelter in place” effort in the Bay Area).

In this quickly evolving situation, I want to make sure all of our clients have the contact phone number needed to reach us. We have teams answering our phone number—213-634-7187—from 7:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. ET Monday through Friday.

Part of our business relies on mail delivery services, and we are closely monitoring the status of USPS and other carriers. Today, USPS released a statement indicating that they have “so far experienced only minor operational impacts in the United States…” and “is undertaking all reasonable measures to minimize impact” to customers. UPS and FedEx are taking similar measures and are following federal and local government guidance as well.

Mail will continue to be delivered, including check payments to citizens from the U.S. government as part of relief during this crisis. Please know that the CheckAlt team and our network of 13 processing sites across the country are available to serve as your primary or secondary processing option. We are equipped to assist with opening, batching, scanning, processing, and delivering files for you. For our current ATM clients, we are also able to utilize our existing ICL connections to post payment files on your behalf.

I am grateful to our entire team for their positive energy and commitment to our critical economic role as we assist financial institutions and businesses in making and receiving payments with limited human contact. We are all in this together, and we will come out of this stronger.


Stay healthy!

Shai Stern
Co-Chairman and CEO
917-579-3107
sstern@checkalt.com

As banks and credit unions consider the current situation, managing check processing is a clear issue. This is work that cannot be done remotely.