Research continues to highlight the increasing fraud risk associated with cheques and other paper processes in banks.
This is according to the regional executive at Aperta SA, Marius Krige, who says African banks must make sure their strategies for cheque imaging dovetail with those required in all other paper streams.
He will be speaking at the Aitec's annual Banking and Mobile Money Conference at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre in Nairobi, Kenya, from 2 to 3 March.
Krige says as banks are always looking for the most secure and cost-effective way to image-enable their cheque payments streams to comply, they must also consider, at the same time, the opportunity to address other paper-based work streams.
He reckons that most African banks that want to stop paying premium prices for 'tier one' solutions should consider an affordable document image archive and workflow solution that also supports the cheque imaging solution.
Krige says his presentation will address the opportunity for banks to do away with all paper-based processes by implementing solutions like cheque image clearing and settlement solution.
“The presentation will also look at solutions where pay/no pay decisions can be made by customers based on the image presented on a mobile phone,” he says.
According to Aitec, the first decade of the new millennium has probably been the most traumatic ever for the international banking industry. “Added to that, the African region's mobile banking boom opens up a wide range of new security threats for the industry.”
From a commercial point of view, the banks are under siege - on the one hand by mobile operators who have stolen the initiative from them in mobile banking, and on the other hand by microfinance institutions, which are leading the way in banking the unbanked, it says.
In addition, with increased regional economic integration, banks are having to develop effective systems for seamless cross-border transactions.
Aitec says this conference will tap on these issues in the African banking industry by addressing challenges that come with the increased regional economic integration.
The theme of the conference is “Strategies for a new era of financial integration” in response to the accelerated drive for regional business across borders.
Related story:
Africa unpacks banking issues
Share