Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act

When it comes to banking, the newest trend in mobile banking uses an app to take a photo of the front and back of a check for deposit. Did you know you had such a highly advanced imaging device in your pocket?

This certainly wasn’t the first time imaging has changed the way we bank. ATM’s have been scanning checks for years and even before that, check scanners were used on the desks of banks everywhere. In order to keep up with technology, laws have been passed. Most specifically, the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act, most commonly known as the Check 21 Act. Under United States federal law, Pub. L. 108-100, enacted October 28th, 2003 resulting in the creation and legalization of check truncation.

Check truncation is the process of creating a digital version of an original check. By creating an image of the original check electronically you no longer need the physical check. As of 2013, almost 70% of all banking institutions accept scanned versions of physical checks.

To date, the largest issues that have come from the check imaging, such as with check scanners and mobile apps, is most certainly image quality. One thing that affects that is the vast number of contaminants coming in contact with lenses, rollers, and scanners each day. Contaminants such as dirt, oil, grime and paper pulp build up and can lead to machine downtime.

In the banking business, downtime means lost money!

It is recommended to clean check scanners as much as daily in the case of high traffic machines in order to keep the lenses, rollers and scanners clean. In lower traffic areas, weekly cleanings may be the minimum cleaning necessary in order to keep things running smoothly.

Most common usage is simply feeding a check scanner cleaning card into a machine between 3 to 7 times and then voiding the scan.

This small procedure can help keep your machine up and running properly and avoid maintenance costs as well as misread documents.

Visit our check scanner cleaing card section of our website to purchase yours today!