JPMorgan Treasury has unveiled a new nationwide lockbox network for US corporate customers.
The network rolls out with facilities in Chicago, Dallas and New York. Additional facilities in Atlanta and Los Angeles are scheduled to open later this year. The national network will allow collections to be automatically consolidated into a single account, using standardised processes between sites, says the bank.
"Images of cheques and documents can be retrieved electronically within two hours of deposit, thereby significantly expediting the posting of exception items," says Nancy Pierce, senior vice president for JPMorgan Treasury Services.
The system uses patented browser technology - dubbed Iliad - to provide access to remittance documents nationwide. Features of the browser include payment notification which alerts customers when specific payments are received, image annotation that allows users to "stick" notes to cheque and document images, standard or customised report creation using magnetic ink character recognition (MICR) and key-entered information, and file download capability in Bank Administration Institute (BAI), fixed-length, or comma-delimited formats.
The browser also features a seven-year image archive with disaster recovery back-up, billed by the banks as a "JPMorgan exclusive".
Document images, available in a choice of colour, black and white, and grey-scale for cheques, are delivered via the Internet using 128-bit SSL encryption. The banks says it will also offer direct image transmission and file downloads to clients' corporate archives via a secure Internet file server which stores up to seven business days of data, as well as hard-media delivery via CD-ROM.