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Jamaica's Automated Clearing House In 2001 Jamaica's 6 Commercial Banks joined forces to form a new company, Automated Payments Limited or APL to create an Automated Clearing House. Under the supervision and participation of the Bank of Jamaica and with the financial support of the US AID's New Economy Project the ACH Project initiated. The ACH was officially launched to the public on October 1, 2002. The Automated Clearing House is an electronic exchange replacing the existing paper based clear system. The ACH enables the faster processing of cheques to reduce the costs involved in the processing of paper items, reduce the amount of time it takes to clear cheques and improved service to customers. Automated Clearing House systems exist in many countries as an important tool to unpin the exchange on value within the financial services sector. As such the ACH is a vital element in an efficient economy Before the advent of Jamaica's ACH system the time taken to clear a cheque deposited at a bank could take between 5 to 7 days. Since the introduction of the ACH the hold period has been reduced to only 3 days! This dramatic increase in the speed of exchange has improved the efficiency of money use and allowed for even better cash flows in businesses. Overall the ACH has been a tremendous success handling over 40,000 items per day and exchange value of about J$160 Billion per month or over J$2 Trillion per year! J.E.T.S. Limited played the part of technical support and coordination of the project and is the operator of the ACH system under contract with Automated Payments Limited.
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