StepChange Charity the UK’s leading debt charity has partnered with Checkprint part of the TALL Group of Companies, the UK leader in the provision of secure paper and payment solutions, to streamline its printing and distribution of cheques.

Checkprint Ltd will install two separate CheckPrint™ solutions in the StepChange Leeds site where the charity issues 55K charity cheques per annum, and 10K Voluntary Arrangement cheques to enable clients to repay their creditors.  By installing the innovative printing solutions, the charity will be equipped with the tools to benefit from the introduction of cheque imaging and digitised faster clearing in the UK. This includes the application of bank-recommended image survivable features (ISFs). Using one of the systems, the charity cheques will have a Unique Coded Number (UCN) added. With the other, the Voluntary Arrangement cheques have the UCNPlus®, the TALL Group’s patented cheque fraud protection technology applied. The enhanced UCNPlus® ISF consists of an encrypted QR Code printed on the face of the cheque. This has advantage in that the UCN Plus® replicates the benefits of paper-based ‘Positive Pay’, by providing an automated, fully ‘hands-off’ version for the cheque image clearing system (ICS), whilst removing the costs of data file preparation, transfer and any associated manual administration.

StepChange provide the UK’s most comprehensive debt advice service, helping people with debt problems take back control of their finances and their lives. Checkprint’s innovative cheque printing technology will help them to comply with the latest regulations, speed up printing and distribution of cheques.

Glen Tillotson, Regulatory Finance Manager at StepChange commented: “Prior to working with The TALL Group many of our processes were very manual and laborious for our team.  By introducing these innovative printing and distribution solutions we are able to modernise our cheque processing, allowing our team to spend their valuable time working on other tasks, whilst also reducing the risk of fraudulent action against the charity.”

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Martin Ruda, Group Managing Director of the TALL Group of Companies, said: “We are the leading provider of security print, secure payment and online solutions for the UK’s major banks, blue-chip companies, retailers, SME’s and print management companies.  We are delighted to partner with charities like StepChange to streamline its payment operations and bring cost and time efficiencies into their existing internal processes. We are also pleased that we can introduce the benefits of the UCN & UCN Plus® ISF to StepChange to reduce the risk of fraud and provide the added time savings to the cheque clearing process through its use.”

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