EXECUTIVE CORNER By Danne Buchanan

Remote Deposit Capture - We've Only
Just Begun

The Check Clearing Act for the 21st Century will celebrate its fifth year in 2008, having been signed into law on Octo-ber 28th, 2003. For many it’s hard to believe that this land-mark legislation was enacted that long ago. Five years is a long time in the fast paced world of technologic innovation. But how far have we really come in these first years? And more importantly, what does the future of remote deposit capture look like?

Since the passage of Check 21 legislation, we have seen thousands of remote deposit capture seats deployed in the market, we have witnessed millions of transactions being processed and billions upon billions of dollars have success-fully been moved through this new deposit vehicle. The deposit process has been revamped by all who use remote deposit capture—as they now save time in deposit prepara-tion, eliminate transportation costs and have received increased funds availability. By any standard, remote deposit capture solutions have been a tremendous success.

Two different industry analysts have made a few predic-tions about where they believe the industry is going. For 2007, Celent and RemoteDepositCapture.com peg the num-ber of seats at 244,784 and 285,561 respectively. These are impressive numbers for a depository product so new to the market. Butlooking aheadjust a few short years,in 2010 Celent projects 3,040,354 and RemoteDepositCapture.com believes 1,937,497 deployed seats in the market. Take your pick; either number is phenomenal, dwarfing current deployments.

But despite this explosive growth, financial institutions and users of remote deposit capture products will, and should, expect even more in terms of product features and techno-logic innovation. All while mitigating risk, eliminating fraud and ensuring a safe environment for monetary transactions.

So what does all of this mean? It means that the real growth is yet to come. As an industry, we are just barely getting started! We’ve only scratched the surface on the potential of this new—or not so new—technology.

There is still a great deal of work to be done. In the future we will see specialization of remote deposit capture products, built to serve the unique accounts receivable and billing needs of niche markets, such as property management and healthcare.

We will see clearing and settlement of checks via the ACH network in unprecedented ways. POP and BOC are just now gaining traction in the market and new vehicles, such as phases. Look for these types of innovations to continue.
We will see remote deposit and check capture products offered to businesses and merchants by a number of non-financial institutions as these sales organizations realize the potential and aggressively enter the market. The market will continue to welcome and reward those who make viable solutions available.

Innovation and competition are two great forces working together to move remote deposit products, in all its many variation, forward. We are witnesses to only the first chapters of what will be the very long and intricate story of remote deposit capture. How will innovation shape the next five years? How will competition, in all its many forms, create the winners and losers—who will they be? No one knows all of these answers. But for those of us lucky enough to be in the industry, we’ll certainly have a great vantage point to witness it, or hopefully the courage to engage, work and shape it.

Danne Buchanan is CEO Deposited Check Truncation (DTC) are now entering pilot of NetDeposit. He can be reached at 801-273-6067 or dbuchanan@net-deposit.com.

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