the program 40 provides an indication as to whether payment of the check is approved or not approved referring to fig2 a flow diagram 100 depicts steps of a known automatic signature verificaton process in step 102 a check image from either an on us check or an in clearing check is retrieved from the check image archive memory 30 then in step 106 the payor 39 s signature contained in the check image is extracted from the check image as shown in step 108 a reference signature is retrieved from the signature archive memory 20 the particular reference signature retrieved is based upon the checking account number associated with the present check a determination is then made in step 200 as to whether the extracted payor 39 s signature from step 106 matches the retrieved reference signature from step 108 if the determination in step 200 is negative i e signatures do not match then a bank operator is alerted that the present check may be fraudulent as shown in step 112 the process then proceeds to step 122 to determine if there is another check image to be processed if the determination in step 122 is affirmative the process returns to step 102.