Parascript Goes To India

Posted by Mark Brousseau

An interesting article on Parascript from the Indus Business Journal.


Colo. software company checks into Indian market

Check-recognition product for payment processors
BY CHRIS NELSON

BOULDER, Colo. – Parascript LLC – a U.S.-based company that specializes in image-analysis and pattern-recognition technology – has set its sights on the Indian market. The Boulder-based company recently introduced its universal check-recognition and verification software, CheckPlus International, to banks and other payment processors for use in India.

The software that the company has made available for use in India is essentially an updated version of CheckPlus International, which the company developed from the original CheckPlus software. Designed for use among banks, financial institutions and payment processors, CheckPlus enables efficient processing of digitized check images and “makes sense” of the data found on checks, according to Yuri Prizemin, Parascript’s director of product marketing.

“Parascript’s technology extracts meaningful data from documents and turns it into actual information,” he said. “CheckPlus offers a streamlined approach to processing checks and other financial documents because it incorporates three important technologies – check recognition, forms recognition and signature verification – into a single product.”

Already being used in nine international markets – including France and Portugal – CheckPlus International allows payment processors to meet country-specific check formats, backgrounds and writing styles while accurately interpreting information on documents, according to ParaScript. India, which is home to at least 29 different languages and hundreds of dialects, presented Parascript with a problem that it had not encountered in other nations, according to Prizemin.

“India is a unique country in that it is home to so many languages,” Prizemin said. “So we started with an English-language version of CheckPlus International, but have plans to expand it to other languages in the future.”

Depending on the country, CheckPlus International is also able to read a check’s payee line, the so-called magnetic ink character recognition, or MICR line (the band of computer-generated numbers printed at the bottom of a check; it was developed in 1956 by the American Bankers Association to facilitate the processing of checks); and checksum. The latter is a computed value that enables a financial institution to check the validity of something; typically, checksums are used in data transmissions to detect if the data has been transmitted successfully.

The technology can also perform signature presence detection and verification on personal and business checks, making it easier for financial institutions to quickly identify random and skilled forgeries.

Prizemin said Parascript has long recognized the need to expand to other international markets aside from those that it already operates in, so when the company’s partners in India asked it to develop a version of CheckPlus International specifically for the subcontinent, it acted quickly.

“They told us that us they needed a technology solution [to handle electronic check processing] in India,” he said. “From our perspective, we knew that we could do this because we had already built the basic fundamental technology base layers in CheckPlus and CheckPlus International; we knew that we could adapt both programs for use in multiple international markets. So, we simply added some modules to CheckPlus International for use in India.”

Thus far, only one of Parascript’s partners in India – Aperta Ltd., a payment-processing company headquartered in the United Kingdom with locations worldwide – has permitted the company to acknowledge it publicly.

In a statement, Aperta technical director Martin Wylupke said CheckPlus International enhances the products that Aperta markets to its banking and service partners in India, when used in conjunction with Aperta’s check-image processing application.

CheckPlus works by automatically locating and recognizing eight standard field types that are typically found on business and personal checks, cash tickets, deposit slips, money orders and image-replacement documents, which were mandated by the federal Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act (better known as Check 21) of 2003.

Those field types include the currency amount, payee line, check date, check number, MICR line, the location of the payor block on personal and business checks, and verification of the payor’s signature on personal and business checks.

Adopted Oct. 28, 2004, Check 21 is a Congressionally approved law that allows the recipient of a paper check to create a digital version, thereby eliminating the need for further handling of the physical document. It essentially promotes an image swap among or between financial institutions, rather than the decades-old practice of exchanging paper checks, which in turn accelerates clearing cycles and reduces processing and labor costs.