MUSCAT -- The Cheque Imaging System (CIS), which is part of a larger plan by the Central Bank of Oman (CBO) to introduce a comprehensive national payment system for electronic funds transfer, is due to be operational before the end of this year, the apex bank said in its 2007 Annual Report. The project is currently under implementation by IT solutions provider IMTAC, under a contract awarded by the CBO last November.
The company is deploying an electronic image-based solution from ProgressSoft Corporation, a leading provider of intelligent imaging solutions for the financial sector. Its launch later this year will enable the electronic exchange of cheque images and data, replacing the current physical transfer of cheques to and from the CBO clearinghouse service. Besides revolutionising cheque processing and clearing procedures, the CIS initiative will also usher in an era of paperless cheque clearing in the Sultanate.
According to the CBO, the state-of-the-art Cheque Imaging System will enable banks to continuously clear cheques in T+0 days, settle and view their balances throughout the day, and thereby efficiently manage their funds and cash flows. This will be a huge improvement over the current system for inter-bank cheque settlements, which is done manually and takes anywhere between two days to a fortnight for the beneficiary's account to be credited.
Thus, with the introduction of the CIS, a cheque deposited at any bank in the morning will result in the funds being credited to the depositor's account the same day. The system will also do away with the need for staff resources to be present at the CBO's clearinghouse. The apex bank itself will no longer need a large team to manually sort through the cheques.
Additionally, the new system will provide the clearinghouse and the CBO complete control over the online clearing process. According to ProgressSoft, the CIS system will initially deploy an electronic network to connect the CBO with all 10 commercial banks in Muscat and their branches. The following phase of the project will involve countrywide implementations across all the Sultanate's banks and remaining branches.
Significantly, the CIS is the latest addition to the CBO's National Payment Systems modernisation programme aimed at introducing an efficient payment and settlement system within the Sultanate's financial sector. As part of this initiative, the apex bank has already launched the Real Time Gross Settlement System (RTGS), a high value payment system providing settlement facilities not only on transaction to transaction basis but also to the deferred net settlement system (DNSS), such as cheque-clearing and ATM/PoS transactions.
By Conrad Prabhu
© Oman Daily Observer 2008
