OrboGraph
Intelligent Payment Automation Technology Continues to Innovate Check Image Payments

Concerning monetary transactions and payment rails, there is a perception that newer methods are faster than traditional paper-originated payments. While there are new initiatives in process, i.e. Faster Payments and Same Day ACH, a little known fact is that many large banks are exchanging 70- 80 percent of their check images the very same day the check is presented for payment. Posting happens that very night, and overall, the process is very efficient.

Checks still represent 18B transactions per year in the US, and the decline has slowed to a mere 2.8 percent of overall transit (checks drawn on other banks) volume from 2016 to 2017. In some cases, checks are growing—According to the 2016 AFP Electronic Payments Survey, B2B check usage is up to 51 percent. ECCHO also reports that transit check dollar amounts have actually increased by 3.1 percent, from 9.5T to 9.8T. This six-month dollar amount is larger than the annual GDP for every country in the world except for the U.S. and China. The implementation of new technology has contributed to the stabilizationof check payments.

Boston-based OrboGraph strives to add more mileage to paper-originated negotiable items. Traditionally known for CAR/LAR or amountrecognition, the company’s goal is “to facilitate electronification of payments so that paper-originated items and image-based payments flow through the clearing and settlement process with levels of automation, minimal errors, limited human intervention, less fraud, lower risk of compliance, and the highest levels of customer satisfaction possible.”

OrboGraph is a highly recognized name in the financial industry, touching over 4000 financial institutions directly, via business partners and service bureaus. Their solutions to automate the process of depositing paper-originated negotiable items such as checks, money orders, preauthorized drafts, touching billions of transactions and internal tickets per year across a wide range of omnichannel workflows, including centralized proof of deposit, teller capture, branch capture, regional processing centers, wholesale lockbox, and Mobile RDC to name a few.

The firm utilizes its foundational strategy to leverage OCR, ICR, CAR, LAR, script, and word to provide an integrated portfolio of recognition-centric solutions. The technology takes raw results from a number of engine toolkits to create higher confident scoring models. These superior results are then incorporated into a final deliverable, which can be tightly integrated with a broad range of image capture platforms. The resultant field-level approaches can effectively capture data from fields such as amount, date, payee, payor/maker, signature, indorsement, MICR, and serial number. The endresult is a system which improves payment automation to near straight-through processing levels of efficiency, eliminates significant human intervention and costs, andreduces fraud losses and compliance risk in a variety of areas, including Reg CC, UCC, OFAC, and AML while significantly improving overall quality.

Advocates of electronic payments largely aim at security vulnerabilities of paper-based instruments as a method of downplaying the weaknesses of electronic payments. OrboGraph’s advanced image analysis effectively mitigates check fraud losses with a modular approach compatible with workflow specific requirements. Field-level negotiability tests and additional document classification capabilities coupled with image analysis and image interrogation, run on both on-us and transit checks. This allows a financial institution to score checks, money orders, and drafts drawn on other banks for potential forgery, alteration, and counterfeit fraudulent scenarios.

The company recently launched OrboAnywhere and has seen excellent immediate success, deploying Anywhere Payee in a large U.S. bank’s wholesale lockbox environment as well as in a high volume ATM processing center. With focus on recognition processing, OrboGraph is further investing in divergent technologies, which promise to deliver higher rates of automation from non-traditional fields. By leveraging newer technologies and with its Intelligent Payment Automation mantra, OrboGraph will continue to enhance the viability of paper-originated payment methods.