Check 21

Congress passed the Check 21 Act in 2004 which allows checks to be sent between banks as images. This requred the creation of the “substitute check” or an Image Replacement Document (IRD) to allow small banks without the capability of processing check images to process them as paper.

Image Replacement Document (IRD)

The All My Papers (AMP) company had special software to rapidly print images (not just checks). During the ramp up to automatic check image processing, even large banks needed to create IRD’s. AMP software, during the early days of Check 21, was processing/printing over 8 million checks a day.

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