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On October 28, 2002 the formal Public Launch of the Automated Clearing House service was announced. The ACH system had been in live operations since October 1, 2002 and was already meeting with tremendous success processing 38,000 items per day. Mr. William Clarke, President of The Jamaica Bankers Association, make the announcement at a special function attended by representatives of Jamaica's banks, the Bank of Jamaica and the US AID. The Jamaican Bankers we please to advise the pubic of the major advance in banking technology that has accelerated the pace of cheque payment processing by over 200%. Only just weeks before this presentation Minister of Finance Davis had made a call on the banks to move toward first world level processing to meet at least a 3 day clearing period over the 5 to 7 days it was taking. It was a happy coincidence that the years of work that went into building the ACH materialized in time to meet the Ministers' call. Mr. Clarke further advised that the ACH was only in its first phase with cheque processing. Next, he promised, in Phase II Jamaica will have an all electronic Debit and Credit payment service. This will allow for more efficient Direct Credits such as payrolls direct from the Employers bank account to the Employee's account in any commercial bank. Insurance Companies will also benefit by the Direct Payments feature allowing from insurance premiums to be charged to customer accounts electronically. In Phase III the ACH will move towards the elimination of paper cheques by reducing the items to electronic images that will see the paper cheques being imaged at the point of deposit. The images will be exchanged between the banks and finally the customer will receive a statement that will carry just the image of the cheques. This will dramatically reduce the cost of processing while again improving speed and service to customers.
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