CheckClear's Endpoint Exchange Network Announces Agreement to Discuss Exchanging Check Images with the Federal Reserve Banks.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

OKLAHOMA CITY--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 4, 2004

CheckClear LLC, the owner and operator of the Endpoint Exchange Network, and the Federal Reserve's Retail Payments Office, today announced their intention to cooperate on planning to establish system connectivity to allow for the sharing and electronic exchange of check data and images between their respective platforms.

The Federal Reserve provides a nationwide solution that can reach every U.S. financial institution. The Federal Reserve provides check processing services, including traditional check clearing, electronic check presentment, image capture, and image archive services, for commercial banks, thrift, and credit unions across the country, totaling approximately 8,000 institutions.

The Federal Reserve currently offers an array of capture, archive, retrieval, and delivery options that support interactive services not only between the Reserve Bank and the depository institution but also between the financial institution and its retail customers. Under Check 21, the Federal Reserve will introduce a new suite of services to offer customers more options than ever before.

Customers with image-enabled operations will be able to send image cash letters and return image cash letters directly to a Federal Reserve Bank, resulting in a more efficient process for return item pulls, return item qualification and cash letter creation. For deposit side customers not yet image-enabled, Reserve Banks can select items for expedited clearing, reduced operating costs and extended processing windows. This will facilitate accelerated clearing of large-dollar items and improve deposit times.

CheckClear's Endpoint Exchange Network is a national network through which financial institutions can send and exchange check images rather than paper checks for clearing and settlement. In less than two years over 4,000 financial institutions across the country have enrolled in this fully interoperable network.

The changing ratio of paper to electronic payments presents a business challenge to all financial institutions, which are under increasing pressure to generate efficiencies from their item processing operations, particularly with the provision of the Check 21 Act going into effect in late October of 2004.

Through membership in the Endpoint Exchange Network, any image-enabled financial institution will have the ability to send images to the Endpoint Exchange Network in multiple formats. The concept for exchanges between Endpoint and the Reserve Banks is that those images and data would be used to prepare image cash letters to send to the Federal Reserve in DSTU X9.37-2003 format. The Endpoint Exchange Network would be able to receive and process images from the Reserve Banks for delivery and presentment to its member institutions.

The combined reach of The Federal Reserve Banks and the Endpoint Exchange Network -- the imaging technology infrastructure, integration competency, and established customer relationships -- will provide an unprecedented level of check image exchange. This collaborative relationship will have a very positive exponential effect on the overall productivity, and efficiency of the national check clearing and settlement system.

"The Federal Reserve will continue to leverage our new FedImage technologies and work with CheckClear and the other electronic exchanges as they move into production, to provide cost efficient check image exchange to financial institutions across the country," stated Fred Herr of the Federal Reserve's Retail Payments Office.

"The Federal Reserve Banks have always been positioned to offer all financial institutions, large and small, access to quality check imaging services and we are very excited to be work with them," said Mark Craig, General Manager of CheckClear, LLC, the owner and operator of the Endpoint Exchange Network. "We share the Federal Reserve's commitment to improving check processes through image exchange and we look forward to participating with the Federal Reserve on future industry efforts to foster the electronic exchange of payments information."

About CheckClear's Endpoint Exchange Network

Use of CheckClear LLC's Endpoint Exchange Network, based in Oklahoma City, enables U.S. financial institutions to clear their check-based transactions by allowing for the exchange of check images between member institutions. Already over 4,000 financial institutions have enrolled in the national network, which is the largest, and only mechanism of its kind in operation. Additionally, several of the country's leading image item processing software companies and image-enabled item processing service bureaus including Jack Henry, AFS, BISYS, VSoft Corporation, Infonox, Aurum Technology, Intercept, and Data Center Inc. (DCI), have announced plans to make the Endpoint

Exchange Network available to users of their image check processing systems. The Endpoint Exchange Network is the country's first and only electronic check clearing network that capitalizes on existing imaging infrastructure and settlement relationships, with the interoperability to connect to every endpoint in the nation. Learn more about the Endpoint Exchange Network at www.endpointexchange.com.

For more information on the Federal Reserve financial services, visit www.frbservices.org.