CheckWorks attended the Endpoint Exchange Developer Seminar, a conference held by the national check image exchange network owned and operated by CheckClear, LLC. The organization’s speakers presented details about its growing base of member financial institutions, as well as its various initiatives, including of the Endpoint Exchange Application Program Interface (API). Endpoint Exchange is soliciting Certified Solution Partners to develop interfaces to their API. The API will allow any item processing system in the United States to connect to the Endpoint Exchange network.

The seminar was well attended by both developers and banks. Mark Craig, General Manager of Endpoint Exchange, described the progress achieved in the past year, especially in light of Check 21 legislation. Questions from the audience covered numerous topics, including image quality, an area where CheckWorks is placing a lot of focus.

In the view of CheckWorks, the Endpoint Exchange model works well for the smaller financial institutions with lower volumes. Its method of streaming and processing images in near real time, with MICR data to follow, seems to make efficient use of bandwidth. It is still unclear whether this would work for larger financial institutions with the higher volumes. Also, the X9.37 format (used by SVPCo and others) is already becoming firmly established as the preferred method for larger institutions. It remains to be seen how well the two models can co-exist.