Banking Software Developer Enters Conversion Game

I f you don't know who Denny Carreker is or have never heard of his company, it means that you have never been a U.S. banker. Between consulting services and software development, Denny has helped hundreds of banks in the U.S. improve their businesses.

Well, now he plans to do the same thing for their check migration to electronics.

Carreker's acquisition of Check Solutions, the highly regarded payment technology infrastructure company, is the latest Carreker move to be the preeminent provider of payment technology to the financial services industry.

Check Solutions has a 20-year history of high-quality banking relationships, including half of the top 100 banks in the U.S. The acquisition brings Carreker 250 employees based in Memphis, Tenn., and Charlotte, N.C. It also brings 75 technology applications in five major areas: Capture, Archive, Image, Back Office and Customer Services Online.

Joe Rowell, Check Solutions founder and president, becomes president of the Check Solutions Group within Carreker's Global Technology Solutions.

Mike Hansen, Executive Vice President, Managing Director of Global Technology Solutions, says, "Clients tell us one of their biggest challenges is: How do we maintain our hold over payments while we migrate from paper to electronics? That's the central question we're answering with our Carreker-Gartner research project, and this acquisition is one of the ways we are helping banks answer that question."

At stake for banks is an enormous source of their revenue. The U.S. payment market size is about $200 billion, and banks own about half. Payments account for an average of 42 percent of the operating income of the top 25 bank holding companies and as high as 75 percent of the payment leaders, according to a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

In the U.S. today, fully two-thirds of payments are in the form of checks. Check volumes have continued to grow in absolute numbers and will continue to grow for the next three to five years, even while they are being rapidly migrated to electronic forms.

To manage the migration profitably and efficiently, banks need a single- source provider with in-depth expertise and technology solutions across the payment system landscape. Carreker's track record indicates that he will make a difference.