Digital Check Corp.

We're conducting a market research study among banking and treasury professionals about what the future holds for Remote Deposit Capture. Help us gain key insights by taking part in this brief survey: https://lnkd.in/gQtN8A_y All answers are confidential, and you will not be asked to share sensitive information.

"First we need a savings bank. Let us put our moneys together; let us use our moneys; let us put our money out at usury among ourselves and reap the benefit ourselves. Let us have a bank that will take the nickels and turn them into dollars." -Maggie L. Walker, August 20, 1901. Independent Order of St. Luke Annual Convention. Our concluding #BreakthroughInnovation spotlight this month honors the first woman in America to charter a bank: Maggie Lena Walker. Born July 15, 1864 in Richmond, Virginia to an enslaved mother, fathered by a former Confederate-army soldier, Maggie had to learn quickly to financially help her mother, after her father died, when Maggie was barely a teenager. At 14, she joined Richmond's Independent Order of St. Luke, a local organization that cared for the sick and elderly. After graduating high school, she held high-ranking positions early on, including publishing their newspaper, The St. Luke Herald, where she encouraged blacks to start businesses and promote economic advancement through the newspaper. Womenshistory.org states "Walker had always focused her efforts on accounting and math. Her first business endeavor was a community insurance company for women. From there she continued her entrepreneurial pursuits. In 1903, she founded the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank. Walker was the first woman of any race to charter a bank in the United States. The bank was a powerful representation of black self-help in the segregated South.?The Penny Savings Bank not only attracted adults but Walker worked to appeal to children by passing out banks which encouraged them to save their money." As a leading businesswoman, community leader, and teacher at the turn of the century, her vision to start a bank was in the stream of ongoing efforts for improving the lives of African-Americans across the country (as our previous post highlighted). Not only did her entrepreneurial efforts result in 50,000 banking members across Virginia by 1924, over 500 mortgages issued for black homeownership, and surviving through the Great Depression, she eventually consolidated Penny Savings Bank with two larger banks in Richmond, and it is still in operation today. She would also serve in leadership roles for the NAACP, NACW, and a longtime board member of the Virginia Industrial School for Girls. Wheelchair bound with paralysis later in life, she died in 1934, due to diabetic complications, at the age of 70. Sources: nps.gov, womenshistory.org, wikitree.com

You're never too old to start something new. This week's #BreakthroughInnovation spotlights one of the founders of the National Banking Association in 1927: Richard R. Wright, Sr. Born into slavery on May 16, 1855, near Dalton, Georgia, was educated as a freed child at the Storrs School, the forerunner to Atlanta University. Wright was named the college's Valedictorian at its first commencement in 1876. In 1891, Wright founded the Georgia State Industrial College (now Savannah State University), serving as the school president until 1921. In 1898, Wright took a leave of absence from collegiate duties to serve as a Major in the U.S. Army during the Spanish-American War, assigned as paymaster by US President William McKinley, Wright was the highest ranked Black American in the war. At the age of 67, he retired from his college president role and moved to Philadelphia -?to open a bank. From blackpast.org: "After taking classes at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, he founded Philadelphia’s Citizens and Southern Bank and Trust Company.?At that time it was the only African American owned bank in the North and the first African American Trust Company.?In 1927 Wright and Durham, North Carolina banker C.C. Spaulding, formed the National Bankers Association, the first organization of black-owned banks in the U.S.??Wright’s bank survived the Great Depression and continued to grow slowly.?In 1957 it had assets of $5.5 million when it was sold to a group of African American investors. Wright, in his eighties, also led the effort to create National Freedom Day, to commemorate President Abraham Lincoln signing the 13th Amendment on February 1, 1865.?As he argued, it was this measure rather than the Emancipation Proclamation which freed all American slaves.??One year after his death, both houses of the U.S. Congress passed a bill to make February 1 National Freedom Day.?The measure was signed into law by President Truman on 1948 and helped give impetus to national recognition for Black History Week and Black History Month. Richard Robert Wright, Sr. died in Philadelphia in 1947. He was 94." Source: https://lnkd.in/dT_zumtd

Happy President's Day! We've kicked off the 2025 events season with our global partners ?? ?? ?? Destinations so far: IBEX INDIA in Mumbai, Deluxe Exchange in Scottsdale, AZ, and IBT Apps? in Georgetown, TX. We're thankful for safe arrivals and wonderful hosts. Check out our Spring schedule here: https://lnkd.in/gfmr363c What business travel do you have coming up?

100 years of progress. From the Free African Society of 1787, we continue our Breakthrough Innovation spotlights today with the first black-owned bank in the United States: Capital Savings Bank, which formed in 1888, and after just 4 years of operation, boasted deposits over $300,000. Located in Washington, D.C., 14 years after the demise of Freedmen's Savings Bank, the chartered bank branches by US Congress from 1865-1874 to collect deposits from newly emancipated communities in southern states, Capital Savings Bank, according to fedpartnership.gov, "gave African Americans a venue in which to learn about and participate in the business of banking. It was set up to reach all classes of the community so that everyone could learn the valuable economic lessons of being industrious, seeking employment, saving their money, and getting homes. African-American churches and fraternal organizations built further on that foundation by serving as pooling places for the capital needed to open a bank that was sensitive to the needs of the African-American community. Between 1888 and 1934, 134 black banks were established, while from 1867 through 1917, the number of black businesses increased from 4,000 to 50,000." #BlackHistoryMonth Source: https://lnkd.in/evGAHuKS

Over the course of February, Breakthrough Innovation will be our mini-series of postings, that spotlights American leadership, the people and milestones, in the timeline of?finance and technology history. ? We begin with two ministers. ? In 1787, Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, amid growing racial division and segregation practices in their church, founded the Free African Society in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which served to care for the health, economic, educational, and financial needs of black congregants and the growing number of freed black residents in the city. Think of it like America's forerunner to Credit Unions. The Free African Society would also lay the groundwork for more that we’ll highlight next time. Nationally, U.S. banking began a few years earlier in 1781, when Congress passed an act that established the Bank of North America, also in Philadelphia. During the American Revolution, the bank solely controlled currency; before this time, private banks printed their own bank notes, backed by deposits of gold and/or silver. #BlackHistoryMonth Sources: https://lnkd.in/gD8WNC9g and https://lnkd.in/gnsvE-ui

64 years ago in Georgia, history was made through a check deposit. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. endorsed a check made out to him by a Milwaukee resident, dated December 1960, which came about a month after Dr. King was released from a Georgia state prison where he was sentenced to 4 months of hard labor - for a traffic violation. What followed is 8 years of courageous leadership that we honor today. Image courtesy of RR Auction Some fun finance facts: This check doesn't have MICR characters. This lot of checks are probably among the last of that kind, as MICR-included checks were first introduced in late 1959. More details from the auction site: Personal check, 6 x 2.75, filled out and signed by Michael Milligan, payable to Martin Luther King, Jr. for $6, December 1960. Endorsed on the reverse in ballpoint, “Martin Luther King, Jr.” Below King’s endorsement signature is a deposit stamp, directing the funds to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The reverse also bears bank stamps dated to Atlanta, Georgia, on January 9, 1961.

With the #NewYear upon us, we look back on 2024, which marked the 20th anniversary of #Check21, when banks began settling check payments electronically, rather than by exchanging the original paper checks. We reflect on how the Check 21 Act modernized the industry, including all the steps it took to get there, as well as the very different attitudes people had about it at the time.

Not just this week, but every day ? Happy Thanksgiving!