Automated teller machine (ATM) specialist NCR has clinched a US$5 million deal with HSBC in Hong Kong to help the bank re-engineer its cheque-clearing operations, boosting the bank's efforts to provide more innovative services for customers.
United States-based NCR will build a cheque imaging and truncation system (CITS) that will speed up the bank's ability to process the 500,000 cheques it handles each day.
'The installation of CITS will help us streamline our IT operations,' said Y B Yeung, head of information technology and assistant general manager at HSBC.
Andrew Long, HSBC's head of operations and processing for Asia-Pacific, said this project strengthened the bank's development programme for all lines of business, which included investing in new service delivery systems such as Internet banking and electronic transactions through ATMs.
NCR will supply its iTRAN 8000 Imaging Transport as the main hardware component for the bank's cheque-imaging system. The company will also supply the project's principal software component, ChequeMark.
Lee Schram, NCR vice-president and general manager of its payment and imaging solutions unit, said the cheque-imaging project extended a development programme on CITS between the company and HSBC that started in 1996.