ATLANTA – Palmetto Cooperative Services has selected VSoft's branch capture solution to offer image exchange to its item processing credit union clients.
PCS is a wholly owned subsidiary of the South Carolina CU League. It is unique in that it has close partnerships with the league in not only South Carolina, but also North Carolina and Virginia. It also has item processing arrangements with VACORP FCU (Virginia's corporate) and First Carolina Corporate. These ties give PCS considerable reach when it comes to expanding its item processing business.
Currently, though PCS processes inclearing share drafts for 160 CUs, only 30 use PCS for check collection. They are all in South Carolina as close proximity is still vital for check collection. Mark Curran, senior vice president/business development for PCS, said with image exchange now expanding, having a physical presence nearby won't be as important in attracting collection business.
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"Clearly with branch capture you can go anywhere. I could market in Hawaii or California. We have no intention of doing that, but we do want to keep them out of our backyard," said Curran of out-of-state processors that might target the Carolinas and Virginia.
PCS' monthly volume is approximately eight million items. Of this total, three million are received as images from the Fed. "Prior to receipt of images, we were having to contract with an air courier to fly these items to us in Columbia, South Carolina each evening. Now, everything is received electronically and we never see the paper checks," said Curran.
Curran thinks PCS can make inroads in North Carolina and Virginia on check collection because PCS is a known entity and understands the culture of the areas. "They're familiar with us. Other corporates have come into our marketplace and haven't had a lot of success." Curran said PCS went with VSoft's solutions for three primary reasons: pricing, the user interface and speed to market. "Some of the other competitors talked about what their plans were, but had not brought anything to market yet," said Curran. VSoft's branch capture solution offers a back-office, branch-level capture and an integrated teller-level application that captures images and data at branches. It can be performed in back-office mode, where the checks and deposits are taken from the teller window to a back-office area at the branch itself and run through a desktop scanner. It can also be integrated into the teller system, where the teller runs the transaction through the scanner while the member is at the window. Curran said he expects most CUs will choose to do branch capture in the back-office. "From a teller perspective, if you're trying to scan those items as you go, it can slow things down," said Curran. Interestingly, PCS uses a solution from AFS for its back-office clearing. "We looked at AFS and quite frankly thought VSoft was the best option for our credit unions," said Curran.
He noted that the AFS and VSoft systems talk to each other so there won't be any compatibility issues. Another twist on PCS is it has a close working relationship with Cooperative Services, Inc. in Georgia. The two CUSOs have formed CU Images, LLC. It's basically a shell organization that owns all of the imaging infrastructure housed at both CUSOs. Curran said CU Images was formed a few years ago when PCS and CSI were gearing up for image exchange and realized they could each benefit by sharing the cost of the necessary hardware and software.
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