The banking industry must seriously consider how substantive improvements can be achieved. In my view, this requires progress in the area of standardisation, in particular. Linking the national retail payment systems throughout Europe has failed so far because the national standards are not compatible with each other.
We believe that image-supported check truncation will become more cost effective for a growing proportion of banks as technology improves and the cost of electronic transmission declines relative to the cost of physical transportation. Beyond operational efficiencies, the draft Act could lower the hurdles that banks now face in moving from physical to electronic processing of checks.