Press Release

VICOR, Inc., Announces Image Inspection and Verification Solution Built on Breakthrough Distributed Framework

VICOR IVS Will Drive Simplified, Secure Image Quality Assurance

Contact: Bob Murphy
VICOR, Inc.
510-621-2047

RICHMOND, CA, July 24, 2005 – VICOR, Inc., a leading provider of technology products for the payments industry, today announced VICOR IVS (Inspection and Verification System), an image quality and image usability assurance (IQA/IUA) solution that utilizes a unique distributed framework to analyze each check image once, to obtain the results required to serve multiple purposes – across a user’s corporate enterprise and across the industry via image exchange partners. VICOR IVS is among the first product offerings within VICOR Everywhere, a new strategic initiative to expand and leverage VICOR’s leading industry position into new markets.

VICOR will showcase the solution in its booth (No. 614) at The Association for Work Process Improvement (TAWPI) 2005 Annual Forum & Expo, July 24-27, in Baltimore.

“The need to efficiently verify the usability of images moving across the payments enterprise has never been more important,” said VICOR President Bob Kirk. “With VICOR IVS, we are leveraging a breakthrough distributed framework as a key stepping stone to deliver IQA/IUA functionality based on business needs – not on the limitations of departmental applications. By offering an inspection and verification key for images, we are making enterprise IQA/IUA platforms easier to deploy and manage, providing a faster track to electronic check clearing.”

With check imaging and electronic check clearing becoming more prevalent in the emerging Check 21 environment, more users are deploying solutions to ensure the quality and usability of the check images they capture, as well as the check images delivered to them by exchange partners. Regardless of the check image applications they have in place, financial institutions and transaction processors need to defend themselves against IQA/IUA risks such as liability limitations, fraud, the inability to recover Day 2 images, and compliance/privacy issues.

VICOR IVS combines a distributed architecture, Web-based services, and compatibility with industry-standard operating systems and databases to provide financial institutions and transaction processors with a single image analysis tool to support payment processing and all its satellite functions -- including check image exchange, fraud detection, risk mitigation, payee recognition, digital signature, stamping, snippet routing, and compliance reporting.

The VICOR IVS solution will allow financial institutions and transaction processors to build and deploy a complete, standards-based and technologically agile IQA/IUA framework to enable check image exchange partners to verify the usability of the images they capture and deliver, and to provide comprehensive image analysis capabilities for an “analyze once” approach.

This “analyze once” approach addresses the tremendous costs and inefficiencies associated with repeatedly analyzing the millions of checks major financial institutions handle each day. Compared to other IQA/IUA approaches, VICOR IVS eliminates the replication of IQA/IUA systems and archives, cuts system administration expenses, reduces bandwidth requirements, slashes storage overhead, and offers users the ability to archive high-quality grayscale images, if they are available. The “analyze once” concept also provides standards for quality and usability across the enterprise, making the job of ensuring usability easier and less costly; banks could use this framework for internal applications as routinely as they retrieve archived images.

Trusted check image exchange partners can use the VICOR IVS inspection and verification key to certify and share usability data for the check images they capture – eliminating the replication of image databases, and allowing for a “network effect,” whereby banks have access to a larger database of information to address and correct IQA/IUA problems shared by all. A one-way representation ensures that no account information is exposed to competitors or fraudsters, and that images and data can be freely distributed without privacy restrictions.

“There will come a time when it will seem ludicrous to have separate image quality and usability systems and standards across the bank enterprise but not have a collective, industry-wide risk mitigation solution in place,” said Mike Dignen, senior vice president, national account management, at VICOR. “Like fraud, image usability is an industry problem, and not an individual bank’s problem. The VICOR IVS approach will provide image exchange partners with rapid IQA/IUA implementation, secure sharing of images, and interoperability with legacy IT systems.”

VICOR IVS can be implemented standalone, in any operations environment, alongside any legacy solutions, or as a fully integrated component of VICOR’s RIDS processing platform.

About VICOR, Inc.

VICOR is a leading provider of technology solutions for the payments industry. The company’s flagship product, RIDS (Receivables Information Delivery System), is the first payment processing and cash management platform to offer full color images and intra-day delivery of receivables information via the Internet and other publishing options. Currently installed in 24 sites, RIDS processed over 180 million transactions in 2004, representing more than $1.1 trillion. VICOR is headquartered in Richmond, CA, and is privately held. For more information, contact 510-621-2000 or visit our Web site at www.vicor.com.