COLLEGE PART, Ga. - In the second phase of a three-stage image-enabling program, Cooperatives Services Inc. (CSI), the CUSO for Georgia CU Affiliates has signed with cavion.com to offer the company's electronic share draft processing and check imaging services, eDraft, to its member credit unions. CSI processes nearly 8 million items a month for about 110 Georgia credit unions. Last fall, the CUSO took its first steps into imaging by installing imaging software from Advanced Financial Solutions (AFS), Oklahoma City, to replace the microfiche products it had used for years to manually and tediously handle item processing. While CSI was implementing its imaging plan, Georgia CU Affiliates was working with CyberBranch, formerly known as Cardinal Services Corp., a wholly-owned, for-profit subsidiary of Stanford FCU, to develop Internet services for Georgia credit unions. Jerry Keenan, CSI's senior vice president said it was through the league's relationship with then-Cardinal Services that CSI learned about cavion.com's eDraft service. When Credit Union Times went to press, the service was only available to credit union staff and enabled them to access members' share draft images from CSI's database over cavion.com's secure frame-relay communications network-CUiNET-or over Georgia CU Affiliates' Internet provider. Eventually, Keenan said credit union members will be able to access images of their share drafts on their own over the Internet. For those credit unions that don't use cavion.com as an Independent Service Provider (ISP), Keenan said CSI will inform the CUSO which credit unions it should let through its security firewalls to access the share draft information. CSI is the third CUSO to offer eDraft. The Missouri Credit Union League's Credit Union Partnership Inc. and the Colorado League Service Corp. have used it since 1999. Prior to using eDraft and installing imaging software from AFS, Credit Union Partnership's League Item Processing Center outsourced the file transmission for St. Louis-area CUs through the Colorado CU League and the Kansas Credit Union League for Kansas City-area CUs. Barbara Morrissey, vice president, LIPC said the processing center didn't have the staff or the modems to send the files themselves. LIPC provides share draft processing for 120 credit unions and handles about six million items a month. As part of its image-enabling plan, LIPC purchased an expanded communications system but it was still concerned about having sufficient communications lines. "Sending the files of processed share drafts over the Internet using eDraft made sense," Morrissey remarked. Anheuser-Busch Employees CU, St. Louis was the first CU to retrieve members' share draft images over caviion.com's eDraft service. At press time, Morrissey said about a dozen of the CUs LIPC processes share drafts for use the service. -
ekingoff@cutimes.com
