In the September issue of Bank Technology News David Foss describes the unprecedented success of remote capture and anticipates even more growth to come, citing projections from Financial Insights and Aite. But most interesting to me was that he sees remote capture as an enabler of "merchant capture" – whereby merchants consolidate and manage their own payments gateway, presumably selecting the least cost processor or bank to handle the transactions on the back end:

Even with the large impact to date, the potential is
significant for continued expansion of merchant capture. The service
will become more sophisticated than capturing check images and
converting them to ACH or Check 21 transactions. Merchant capture
technology will soon provide the commercial customer with an
opportunity to manage its own "payment gateway" to consolidate all
types of payments in one spot, with one tool, giving the merchant even
greater value from its banking relationship.

This future state where corporate customers call the shots, not bankers, has got to have many cash management bankers losing sleep. But it could be a tremendous opportunity for the right vendor.

Read more:

Remote Capture Is Big For Biz
By BY DAVID FOSS
Bank Technology News
September 2007