Meanwhile, competitive and regulatory pressures are leading banks to make funds available to depositors sooner. Emerging image and communications technologies offer opportunities to overcome these limitations. It will cost less to process a check using imaging and electronic transport than with current technology. Less paper and faster processing will produce increased productivity and labor-saving cost benefits. A major benefit will be realized by reducing or potentially eliminating transportation costs.
Banks physically transport millions of paper checks daily, using cars, trains, trucks, and jets.
Image interchange over networks would not require physical transportation. The project's goals were aimed at achieving check truncation at the earliest possible point in the payment system. Project participants spent much time looking into truncating at the Bank of First Deposit. This would eliminate transportation for clearing purposes. In addition to transportation costs, the electronic transaction infrastructure can be amortized over other transaction types such as letters of credit and traveler's checks.