The Hindu Business Line : NCR to run cheque truncation pilot project

NCR Corporation, a payment solutions business provider, has recently been selected for implementing the RBI's pilot project on image-based cheque clearing.

The project is likely to commence in July and will cover 2,500 branches of 83 banks in New Delhi and its outskirts, Mr Alan Chow, Vice-President, NCR Corporation, told Business Line.

The project is expected to be ready by the first quarter of next year, he said. NCR is the LI vendor for the project, he said.

The image-based cheque clearing process requires a scanner at the cheque accepting point, be it the ATM or the branch, readers and sorters at the service branch and an archival system to store the image of the cheque. The scanner captures the image of the cheque and this image is sent for clearing, instead of the physical cheque.

The system ensures secure and faster clearing at reduced cost. The NCR solution will have three different components. It will provide the ability to capture the image of the cheque and send it to the clearing house; it will act as the clearing house and also provide the facility to store the image.

Speaking about the potential for growth of the image based-cheque clearance in the country, Mr Chow said India is among the countries where usage of cheques is showing a continual growth. The volume of cheques being cleared is an average of two billion per year.

According to Mr Chow, from the customer point of view, image-based cheque clearing scores over RTGS, because "banks usually encourage Real Time Gross Settlement only for high value transactions, as the cost per transaction is higher," he said.

However, image-based clearing can be used for small value cheques as well.

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