The Check Clearing Act for the 21st Century (Check 21), enacted by US Congress in 2003, intended to make the US payment system more efficient by encouraging the financial services industry to adopt image based check technologies and electronic processing capabilities (image exchange).  While the payments system and the consumer population has realized many efficiencies from check image technology as a whole, the electronification of checks has exacerbated particular operational issues which impedes the realization of the full value of image adoption. 

One particular issue is the lack of common interpretation of TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) Tag standards. As variances to TIFF Tags continue to proliferate as the industry becomes more decentralized in check image capture, banks are at risk for growing returns volume and negative customer experiences due to the inability to use the image in various image applications at the paying bank.

Read i3G's suggestions on how to address this growing industry issue by downloading our document.