System and method for MICR-based duplicate detection and management

• US 8,060,442 B1
• Filed: 04/21/2008
• Issued: 11/15/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 05/01/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Wells Fargo Bank NA (Wells Fargo & Company)
• Original Assignee: Wells Fargo Bank NA (Wells Fargo & Company)
• Inventors: Tyo, Kathy, Rotella, Rick, Smalley, Kathy, Tobey, Jack, Mangum, Brent, Hecht, Alan W.
• Primary Examiner(s): MILEF, ELDA G
• Application Number:
  US12/106,934
• Time in Patent Office: 1,303 Days
• Field of Search: 705/45, 705/35
• US Class Current: 705/45
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/042 characterized in that the payment protocol involves at least one cheque
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/00 Finance; Insurance; Tax strategies; Processing of corporate or income taxes
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/02 Banking, e.g. interest calculation or account maintenance credit or loans G06Q40/03
• CPC Class Codes: G07D 7/0047 using checkcodes, e.g. coded numbers derived from serial number and denomination
• CPC Class Codes: G07D 7/20 Testing patterns thereon G07D7/004, G07D7/005 take precedence

Abstract

A system and method for MICR-based duplicate detection and management identifies duplicate presented items on day one across a plurality of payment channels, prior to posting, preventing them from impacting financial institution customers by rerouting to an adjustments team. Inquiry files containing MICR data for a plurality of presented items are evaluated by a duplicate detection module. Each item presented is evaluated against all previous items based on its MICR line. Unique items are processed in the usual manner. Duplicate suspects undergo further processing. Suspects having identical MICR data, but that are not duplicates, such as NSF (non-sufficient funds) checks being re-deposited, are identified and posted. The remaining suspects go in the suspect queue of a universal workstation. After being researched, suspects found not to be duplicates are posted. The remaining suspects are flagged as duplicates and routed to an adjustor for further action.

Claims

1. A computer readable storage medium encoded with instructions, execution of the instructions by a computing device causing the computing device to perform steps of:

detecting that a presented item in a payment stream is a suspect item by determining that MICR data for the presented item matches MICR data of a previous item in the payment stream, the payment stream comprising a plurality of channels, the channels in the payment stream including at least a first channel and a second channel, a financial institution receiving the presented item over the first channel, the financial institution receiving the previous item over the second channel, the first channel and the second channel being different ones of the following types of channels;

a check processing channel, a local image capture channel, and a distributed image capture channel;

after determining that the presented item is a suspect item, evaluating the presented item against a set of suspect rules to determine whether the presented item is a false positive, wherein false positives are suspect items that are not actually duplicates of other ones of the presented items;

after determining that the presented item is not a false positive, sending the presented item for research;

receiving an inquiry file containing MICR data for presented items in the payment stream;

evaluating the inquiry file against a threshold rule, wherein evaluation of the inquiry file against the threshold rule reveals whether the inquiry file contains more than a threshold number of suspect items that are not false positives;

after determining that the inquiry file contains more than the threshold number of suspect items that are not false positives, directing the inquiry file to a first suspect queue to be researched to confirm whether or not the suspect items in the inquiry file are duplicates of other presented items in the payment stream; and

after determining that the inquiry file contains less than the threshold number of suspect items that are not false positives, extracting the suspect items that are not false positives from the inquiry file and direct the extracted suspect items individually to a second suspect queue to confirm whether or not the extracted suspect items are actually duplicates of other presented items in the payment stream.

2. The computer readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein execution of the instructions by the computing device further causes the computing device to post false positives in the payment stream.

3. The computer readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein execution of the instructions by the computing device causes the computing device to:

retrieve an image of an original item and an image of a given suspect item, the given suspect item being one of the suspect items in the inquiry file;

confirm the given suspect item as a duplicate item if the image of the original item and the image of the given suspect item match;

confirm the given suspect item as a false positive if the image of the original item and the image of the given suspect item do not match;

designate the given suspect item as an indeterminate item if the given suspect item cannot be confirmed as a duplicate or a false positive from a comparison of the image of the original item and the image of the given suspect item; and

post indeterminate items and false positives.

4. The computer readable storage medium of claim 3, wherein execution of the instructions by the computing device causes the computing device to:

store presented items in the payment stream in a database;

flag items in the database that have been confirmed as duplicate items;

access the database to determine a status of a particular presented item and to remove duplicate items from a posting stream.

5. The computer readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein execution of the instructions by the computing device causes the computing device to:

direct confirmed duplicate items to a fraud-determination business unit for investigation;

direct confirmed duplicate items to a business unit for making adjustments to customer accounts;

if a confirmed duplicate item inadvertently posts to a customer account, automatically reverse a debit to the customer account and direct the inadvertently-posted confirmed duplicate item to the business unit for making adjustments; and

identify and remove duplicate transit items from the payment stream.