Long, who joined The Clearing House 14 years ago, had been running SVPCO's electronic check services. The consolidation of both operations occurs as image exchange volume continues to accelerate, and paper check exchange volume continues to decline nationwide. In April 2007, the volume of check images exchanged exceeded paper checks exchanged by SVPCO for the first time.

"Susan and Jerry have been a terrific team in helping financial institutions transition from paper to electronic checks and realize the significant cost savings in image exchange," said Jeff Neubert, CEO of The Clearing House. "Combining paper and electronic check clearing under one executive has been long planned and will enable The Clearing House to serve its financial services partners more effectively."

Milano came to The Clearing House five years ago after serving as President of Western Payments Alliance and played a key role in consolidating SVPCO's paper check clearing businesses across the country. Earlier in his career, Milano was President of the Chicago Clearing House, President of the California Bankers Clearing House, and was Director of Payments Systems for the American Bankers Association, where he headed research on digital image check truncation. Milano began his career at then-First Chicago (now JP Morgan Chase) and eventually managed retail banking systems for ATMs, on-line teller stations and signature retrieval.

"Jerry Milano has been an outstanding payments professional who has made significant contributions to the industry over many years," Neubert said. "Jerry's leadership and passion for the payments business will be sorely missed, but everyone at The Clearing House wishes him the best in his well- deserved retirement."

Said Milano: "Working with The Clearing House over the past several years has been a most rewarding part of my career. I've been privileged to participate in a period of dramatic change in a consolidating financial services industry. The many projects I've participated in and friends I've worked with over the years have been their own reward."

Over the past two years, Long has been responsible for managing the rapid growth of SVPCO's image exchange operations. During that time, most of the nation's largest financial institutions, as well as the Federal Reserve, have begun participating in the SVPCO Image Payments Network. In August 2007, the image network posted record volume of 454 million check images.

SVPCO provides a seamless migration from paper checks to electronic payments for financial institutions across the country. SVPCO's products include the Image Payments Network, and national and regional paper check exchanges.