Back Office Conversion (BOC)- A Practical Guide for Payments Processing Professionals

TAWPI and TAWPI's Payments to Capture Clearing Council (PCC) has announced our new handbook Back Office Conversion (BOC)- A Practical Guide for Payments Processing Professionals. This comprehensive handbook will give you everything you need to know about Back Office Conversion (BOC). Subjects covered include: Key BOC Rules & Regulations, Benefits of BOC, Issues to Consider when Deciding to Implement BOC, Building a Business Case for BOC, Tips for Choosing a BOC Solution, Potential Fraud Issues.

For Full Executive Summary Click Here:

Sponosord by: Alogent, Comerica Bank, First National Bank, HSBC, Mellon, NEACH, META, Solutran, US Dataworks, and WAUSAU.

Up to 3.1 billion checks were converted to ACH payments in 2006, up more than 36 percent from 2005, according to NACHA and TAWPI members have been out in front of this tremendous growth, having used forms of electronic check conversion since 1999. Under the new BOC rules, retailers and other billers can convert eligible checks to Automated Clearing House (ACH) debits in a controlled environment in the back-office rather than at the point-of-sale or at manned bill payment locations. Businesses no longer have to obtain a signature authorization for conversion or have scanners installed at each checkout or bill payment location. A business needs only to disclose to its customers that their checks will be converted into electronic transactions by means of a notice at the register and on a document that customers take with them, such as the back of a receipt. NACHA says that this is consistent with requirements of the Federal Reserve’s Regulation E.

This document will provide you with a comprehensive overview of BOC. The intended audience is organizations that receive consumer checks at manned payment locations, and financial services companies that are evaluating whether to offer BOC services to their clients. Additionally, vendors offering software and hardware solutions to enable BOC will find this document useful to better understand how their customers are evaluating the business case for BOC. This project was undertaken in response to requests from payments strategists for a comprehensive, actionable guide to understanding and evaluating BOC. Please note that this document is not intended to provide an argument for or against BOC or ACH – but rather to provide information that organizations can use to develop their payment strategies. Special thanks are given to members of the Business Issues Work Group and Operations Work Group of the TAWPI PCC Council for providing valuable information, insight and expertise on BOC. To order the full primer click here:

The PCC Council is comprised of a wide representation of industry segments with a strong interest in electronic check conversion, including large retail billers, lockbox processors, technology vendors and financial institutions. Industries represented include banking, telecommunications, utilities, credit card, retail, insurance and government. The group includes numerous participants having firsthand experience with BOC as well as those in evaluation stages.

Intelligent Document Scanning--Question for the Experts?

I recently spoke with a TAWPI member and they have a customer that is interested in being able to scan incoming invoices, create a file to their AP system and then generate a file out of their accounting system and have a bill pay company “pay the bills” and then the bill pay co. send a file back so that can be uploaded into the customers accounting system to perform account reconciliation on about 2,000 accounts. ACH is not in the picture.

...the monthly check volume is approx. 8,300 and growing
...this customer has a scanning system today, but I am not quite sure what the system is at this point
...the accounting system is proprietary and is in sequel, they expect to be able to create a file in whatever required format is needed

Any words of wisdom from the TAWPI community?

Forget Contacless Payments..Insert Banking Mircochip.

The Matrix," the sci-fi box-office smash, envisions a future in which artificially intelligent computers take over. Instead of programming the computers, humans become the slave race, serving as living batteries that provide energy for their former desktop tools…..We’re not quite there yet but if Visa or MasterCard had their way contactless chip’s would be implanted in our hands at birth with a fixed low APR rate. Maybe even 0% APR for your first 18 years of life? Birth certificates would be signed and shortly thereafter glowing proud parent’s would go from hospital bed into offices and negotiate with sales rep's from Visa in one room and than move to the MasterCard suite. You thought buying a new SUV was bad.

(Digital Transactions - May 31, 2007) All that being said information is beginning to emerge indicating that consumer usage of contactless devices for payments may be picking up. According to an Internet survey conducted by Atlanta-based Synergistics Research Corp. late last year, 9% of respondents had used a contactless card or fob. In two previous surveys, both conducted by phone in late 2005 and late 2004, usage had been flat at 4%. The studies involved 1,000 consumers. On Thursday, another researcher, Report Buyer, estimated contactless transactions in the U.S totaled 777 million in 2006 on 27 million cards and fobs, or around 3% of all general-purpose credit card and signature-debit card transactions. The U.K. firm projects these numbers will grow to 2.2 billion transactions on 109 million devices by 2011.

You know I am probably in the age range and demographic that these researcher's would consider as someone who would adapt to this technology. I remember when Speed Pass came out at Exxon gas stations. I wasn't impressed back then and I am still not moved to adapt today.…..but you never know my wife is due with twins this September. Imagine the serious negotiation power I would have with the card companies with two babies.