The Last Mile: Emerging Best Practices in Returns Processing
Rosetta Technologies is dedicated to developing and marketing the world’s most technically
advanced printers, software and consumables for magnetic ink character recognition (MICR)
applications. Rosetta’s IRDPrint software suite is the most mature, robust, and scalable IRD
printing software system available on the market today. It is used by the industry’s largest item
processors and banks to print tens of millions of IRDs each month and also by community
banks and credit unions printing less than ten items per day. Since 2004 the company’s
solutions have been used to print more than one billion items at thousands of locations
nationwide.
We have produced this white paper for our customers, partners, and prospects to present our
view of the current state of return item processing in the Check 21 era. Since the enactment of
Check 21 in 2004, overall adoption has soared, but returns continue to be in-cleared as paper
at thousands of institutions, particularly community banks and credit unions. In this paper, we
look at how changes at the Federal Reserve Bank are forcing these institutions – and the item
processors and software vendors that serve them – to rethink their returns processing
strategy. We evaluate the options available and assess their respective strengths and
weaknesses. We also offer recommendations on what institutions should look for in an
electronic returns processing solution.