Creating Exchange Ready ICL Files With The X9LIB SDK

Organizations with development staffs and programming resources can now employ the All My Papers X9 LIB software development toolkit to capture checks from any type of scanner and then turn the check images and associated data into image cash letter (ICL) files for exchange with financial institutions. In order to successfully turn check images and data into ICL files that will exchange with your bank, care must be taken to ensure that the check images are ready for exchange and that the output ICL file format meets the specific requirement of your exchange partner.

Composing Image Cash Letters

The X9 LIB SDK allows groups of conformant check images to be combined with MICR line and dollar amount data for each item into a fully formed Image Cash Letter (ICL) File ready for exchange with banks and other financial organizations.

The MICR line data and dollar amounts for this process can come from an upstream capture process or be extracted from the check images themselves using a companion SDK from All My Papers called ampLIB MICR OCR SDK

Bank-Specific ICL File Formats

While there are just a few standard ICL file formats for interbank exchange of check items, there are currently more than 50 bank-specific ICL format variations in use by U.S. and Canadian banks for Merchant and Remote Deposit Capture applications. Therefore, it is imperative that you obtain and understand your bank’s Remote Deposit or Merchant Capture companion document before embarking on your development program. The X9 LIB SDK can support any of these formats. However, the specifics of your Bank’s requirements must be known in order to properly configure your software calls.

Check Image Quality Requirements

Before a check image may be incorporated into an ICL file, you must ensure that it meets all of the image QA requirements of ANSI X9.100-181 commonly known as the Tough Tiff standard.

Capturing Quality Check Images

In order to ensure that a check image will meet the requirements of ANSI X9.100-181, care must be taken in the capture and handling of the check image.

Software can try to compensate for poor quality captured images. All My Papers has software that can resolve multiple issues and turn many poor quality check images into exchange ready conforming images. However, by starting with the best image you can capture on your device, you will garner benefits including:

• Faster throughput
• More accurate MICR OCR
• More reliable CAR/LAR (recognition of the numeric and written amount of the check)
• Fewer items returned for non-conformance with exchange requirements
• Fewer image retakes
• Higher customer satisfaction

All My Papers has developed a Best Practices for Check Image Capture guide so you and your end users can capture the best check images with a variety of scanner and camera devices.

Double-check the Quality of your Check Images

Finally, to ensure that your image indeed meets all the applicable standards, the images should be processed by an image QA software such as All My Paper’s X9 Qualifier (link to https://allmypapers.com/index.php/Applications/qualifier.html ) .

For more information, contact sales@allmypapers.com