In the current economic environment, capturing check images at the earliest point of presentment gives financial institutions an immediate competitive advantage that directly improves the level of convenience and service they are able to offer account holders. Offering image-enabled ATMs paired with remote deposit capture (RDC) can help recruit new accounts and strengthen relationships with existing clients by offering enhanced self-service banking options at multiple remote locations. As image-enabled ATMs gain momentum among financial institutions, the institutions need to closely examine their capture and processing strategies to ensure they are not missing out on critical cost savings and operational efficiencies.

The clear advantages of RDC at the ATM are increased when the items captured at ATMs are combined with a full remote deposit capture platform. By incorporating the ATM capture component into the institution’s entire RDC platform, they will take advantage of enterprise-wide duplicate MICR detection, central archiving and research, and simplified balancing – resulting in earliest funds availability (reduced float), earlier fraud detection and reduced workload. This is a critical, yet often overlooked, component to a comprehensive ATM capture strategy.

The last component of sophisticated ATM capture strategy involves evaluating the transport services utilized to process and clear transactions. When an institution relies on a centralized transport service to move images from multiple capture points (ATM, teller, branch, merchant, consumer) to the back-end item processing solution, they can strategically time and coordinate multiple releases for clearing, resulting in earliest funds availability and savings on dollar amount or item per-transmission fees.

When integrated into the institution’s full remote deposit capture strategy, the image-enabled ATM becomes much more than just a convenience, but rather a significant savings and revenue builder for financial institutions.

To learn about more Up-and-Coming ATM Strategies read the Bank News article, featuring Bluepoint Chief Marketing Officer, Dick Drew.