Expect Branch Capture Renaissance

By Mark Brousseau

Jeff Vetterick (jvetterick@myriadsystems.com), executive vice president of marketing at Myriad Systems, Inc., thinks the ‘next big thing’ in distributed capture may be an old topic: branch capture. “Although branch capture preceded merchant capture by several years, it never took off like merchant capture has,” Vetterick told me this week. “Some banks just couldn’t see the incremental operations improvements that branch capture offers. But what merchant capture has done is show banks how powerful distributed capture can be.”

Also working in branch capture’s favor is that many banks now have imaging and distributed capture deployments – and the associated software and hardware infrastructure – on which to piggyback. “I see a renaissance or second, much larger wave of branch capture building across the market,” Vetterick said, adding that Myriad Systems has been selling branch capture solutions to community banks “left and right. We’ve just closed a bunch of deals.” He expects mid-tier and large banks to start jumping on this trend as well, “big time. Banks that have bought into merchant capture are now turning their attention to branch capture.”

Vetterick said the debate about front or back counter branch capture still exists, with back counter capture remaining the least obtrusive to bank operations and workflow. Unless it is integrated with the bank’s branch automation system, front counter capture is “kluge and clunky” and creates problems associated with not being able to talk to the host, he said.

What has been resolved, at least to Vetterick, is that ASP will continue to see tremendous growth in the branch capture space; more banks view ASP as a more appealing option than spending big bucks on an in-house system or giving up control and outsourcing the work.

What do you think? E-mail me at m_brousseau@msn.com.