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Deutsche Bank spies digital opportunity in cheque processing

Deutsche Bank is to migrate its labour intensive cheque processing operations to a digital, cloud-based platform run by India's HCL technologies.

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Deutsche Bank spies digital opportunity in cheque processing

Editorial

This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community.

Set to go live in 2019, the new paperless platform will not only improve straight-through processing rates it will also generate data on business flows and working capital for onward use by the German bank's corporate and institutional clients.

“While cheques are still widely used around the world, the volumes across the industry are falling and processing them remains a labour intensive, highly manual task,” says Shahrokh Moinian, gGlobal head of cash products, Global Transaction Banking of Deutsche Bank. “This strategic partnership is a great example where we are proactively responding to client needs and changing industry dynamics. We are turning a challenge of a commoditised product with declining volumes into an opportunity for innovation and creation of digital assets, which will ultimately benefit our customers.”

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Comments: (2)

Ketharaman Swaminathan

Ketharaman Swaminathan Founder and CEO at GTM360 Marketing Solutions

When I opened a bank account in Germany in circa 1999, I got 5 cheque leaves. When I left Germany and closed the account in 2003, I returned all 5, unused. Lest that be seen as a B2C thing, I don't recall receiving a single cheque from any of my company's customers, not did my company pay a single vendor by cheque during those 3-4 years. So, non use of cheques in Germany extends to B2B as well, and that's been the case for over 15 years. The B2C situation was almost ditto in UK, although a few customers did pay by cheque. While cheques are still quite popular in India, even since Cheque Truncation System was implemented 4-5 years ago, cheque processing is no longer as labor-intensive as it traditionally has been. Cheques - er, checks - are still in use in USA but digital processing of cheques via Check-21 is at least 20 years old in that country. Thanks to Mobile RDC taking off in a big way, US banks receive cheques in digital form and, unlike India, don't even spend any labor to scan paper cheques.

If DB is still finding cheque processing labor intensive, wonder which geography it's talking about.  

A Finextra member 

Strange time to become excited over cheque clearing when others have already developed solutions. Also comes at a time when the USA, a bastion of "check" use, is witnessing a surge in digital payments.

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