Federal Reserve to Use Viewpointe’s Check Image Archiving Service

The Federal Reserve Banks (Washington, D.C.) have signed an agreement to store their check images with Viewpointe, a provider of check image exchange and archive services. The Reserve Banks' archive, which serves more than 1,000 financial institution customers, will immediately add nearly 10 billion check images to Viewpointe's current archive volume of more than 127.8 billion images stored.

According to the New York-based vendor, Viewpointe worked closely with the Reserve Banks to develop a plan that would benefit the Reserve Banks and offer a transparent transition to their customers. Moving the storage of images in the FedImage archive to Viewpointe is projected to take place over the next 18 months.

The Federal Reserve Banks offer a full range of financial services. "The decision to move the storage of check images to Viewpointe is consistent with other efforts in recent years to reduce our check infrastructure costs and maintain long-term viability," said Fred Herr, senior vice president, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, in a statement announcing the arrangement. "This move allows us to offer our customers state-of-the-art storage technology, reliability and resiliency."

Noting the cost challenges facing organizations in the current economic turmoil, Viewpointe said in the release that many of the nation's leading financial institutions have turned to the provider's archiving service. Noted Diane Scott, president, Viewpointe Emerging Business, "With its shared infrastructure, the Viewpointe archive allows the Reserve Banks to share fixed costs among multiple financial institutions instead of single-handedly absorbing the total cost of archiving." Viewpointe possesses one of the largest national archives of check images and information, and offers archive capabilities, end-to-end check image exchange clearing and settlement and Automated Clearing House association services.