he New York Clearing House (NYCH) recently announced a major enhancement to the Clearing House Interbank Payment System (CHIPS) that provides corporations with real-time final payment transactions combined with related payment details. As a result, corporations can now instantaneously match payments to orders, allowing them to provide shipments more quickly.

NYCH, which has been operating the CHIPS payment system for more than 30 years, has become the industry standard for clearing U.S. dollar payments internationally and processes in excess of $1.3 trillion per day. Originally established in 1853, the role of the NYCH was to simplify the chaotic exchange and settlement process among the banks of New York. Today, the NYCH remains at the crossroads of the financial world.

New Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) capabilities are exclusive to the CHIPS payment system and provide a critical link in the e-commerce payment chain. Payors now have the ability to send up to 9,000 characters of data with their payments, including invoice numbers, discount details, rebates and more. It is aligned with the SWIFT MT 103 message format and supports the American and United National EDI standards and other user-defined formats.

"We are integrating payment information with payments," said Jeffrey Neubert, president and CEO of NYCH. "We implemented the 'Finality' enhancement to CHIPS earlier this year, and now with this EDI capability we have created a total B2B solution for banks and corporate customers. We are now working on our next innovation, the Universal Payment Identification Code (UPIC), which will make it even easier for businesses to send and receive electronic payments." Banks receiving payments on behalf of corporate customers must be able to receive and forward the EDI information as well. "Any reluctance by banks or corporations to adopt EDI is erased with this enhancement," said John Mohr, CHIPS COO. "Our 59 member clearing banks and hundreds of end points have made the system changes, completed testing and are ready to handle EDI transactions, effective today." For more information on the New York Clearing House, contact Bob Davis at rdavis@rubenstein.com, or phone (212) 843-8037.