Clearing House Payments Company Offers Payments By Internet

The Electronic Payments Network (EPN), the ACH payments business of The Clearing House Payments Company in the US, says it can now offer File Transfer Protocol (FTP) over the Internet. This will enable financial institutions to connect to EPN's network

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The Electronic Payments Network (EPN), the ACH payments business of The Clearing House Payments Company in the US, says it can now offer File Transfer Protocol (FTP) over the Internet. This will enable financial institutions to connect to EPN’s network faster and more economically.

FTP provides financial institutions with a universally accepted protocol affording an automated, secure way of exchanging files over the Internet at higher speeds than dial-up and across different operating platforms. FTP gives institutions a cost-effective computer-to-computer interface solution to transfer significant volumes of ACH data at a lower cost. EPN is the only ACH operator to offer FTP to financial institutions.

Commerce Bancorp which operates 305 retail banking locations serving metropolitan New York and Philadelphia, is the first commercial user of EPN’s FTP option. Commerce Bancorp Inc. of Cherry Hill, New Jersey began using FTP in December 2004. Commerce Bank ranks 27th nationally in ACH transactions received, according to a 2003 NACHA survey.

The Commerce Bank management team evaluated EPN’s value-added services, including EPN’s innovations such as the real-time management of ACH operations, the Universal Payment Identification Code (UPIC), EPNWATCH suite of risk management tools and the industry leading initiatives in the business-to-business payment arena. One major obstacle stood in the way of Commerce becoming an EPN customer and that was the communication protocol.

“Commerce Bank had been moving all of its customers over to FTP in the last 18 months,” says Michael Wescoe, Senior Vice President Operations of Commerce Bank. “FTP was a critical component to Commerce’s communications strategy and was the only barrier that needed to be overcome for Commerce to join the EPN network.”

EPN’s FTP option is designed to meet the rising demand from its financial institutions seeking a high-speed, cost-effective way to transfer ACH data files. FTP enables financial institutions to automatically transfer files to and from EPN and financial institution’s processing systems without human intervention. FTP can be easily integrated into a financial institution’s ACH processing operation. The command structure and syntax to use FTP are common across many platforms, including MVS, Tandem, Windows, or UNIX.

“EPN’s outstanding record of innovation has resulted from listening to its customers, prospective customers and the industry to develop new products and services. Commerce’s business was a priority for EPN and implementing FTP was a key strategy for acquiring new business and moving many existing customers off of old dial-up technology,” says Rossana Salaris, senior vice president of The Clearing House Payments Company, responsible for EPN. “We’re pleased to welcome Commerce Bancorp as a new customer to the EPN network and our first FTP client, and we expect to announce more FTP users in coming months.”

To take advantage of FTP, institutions using EPN may need to develop scripts to automatically transfer files to the EPN FTP server. To receive files from EPN, financial institutions can pull files from the server as needed, or allow EPN to push files to them as soon as the files are available. FTP client software can be used to transfer and pull files from EPN.

EPN customers now have several options for connecting to the ACH system: private line (Connect:-Direct), Internet (FTP and PCAIMS), and dial up (PCAIMS). “We want our customers to access EPN in whatever way makes sense for their business,” says Salaris.

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