Help protect your business with Positive Pay

Payments fraud is on the rise, with new and changing tactics emerging every day. If check fraud is negatively impacting your bottom line, you’re not alone. Check fraud continues to be the #1 type of payments fraud, with annual losses in the millions of dollars.

According to the 2017 AFP Payments Fraud and Control Survey, 75 percent of organizations experienced check fraud, an increase from 71 percent in the previous year. In addition, 74 percent reported that their organizations were exposed to business email compromise. Highly sophisticated email phishing tactics designed to infiltrate the accounts payable workflow may be fueling the increase in check fraud.

To minimize the financial and legal impact of check fraud on your business, consider adding another level of security by shielding your deposit products with Positive Pay. As a leading payables fraud-prevention tool, Positive Pay is designed to help stop counterfeit or unauthorized check payments from being processed by making sure everything matches a pre-approved list.

What is Positive Pay?

With Positive Pay, your checks presented for payment are reconciled against a file of approved checks issued by your organization. You send the bank a list of checks your company issues each day. Checks requested for payment are verified against the list — and only the checks listed will be paid. The bank also notifies you of any unauthorized checks, including stale checks and checks that appear to be forged or altered in any way.

You have the ability to decide whether to pay or return checks flagged as exceptions — meaning that checks presented that do not match your issued check file will come to your immediate attention. This is your company’s deposit account’s best defense against counterfeiting. You also may want to implement payee verification, so that a payee name is presented with the Positive Pay issue file.

Although using Positive Pay requires a few extra steps, the advantages for your business are well worth the effort. Consider the many benefits, which include:

• Lower costs. By significantly reducing the potential for check fraud, Positive Pay can save you time, effort and real dollars.
• Easy-to-use. The screens and menus are intuitive and easy to navigate. You and your team can operate the system with minimal training.
• Enhanced security. Identify and stop unauthorized transactions, including counterfeit or altered checks, before final payment.
• Email notification. Receive notifications at one or more email addresses when daily exception items are available for review.

Help protect your business

Businesses of all sizes are candidates for payments fraud. And although you may not be able to prevent your organization from becoming a target, you may be able to prevent or limit financial losses from fraud by using Positive Pay and other fraud detection and control systems.

At California Bank & Trust, we can help you stay up-to-date on new threats and new tools. Check out our Privacy & Security Center for additional resources that can help protect you and your business. View our payment fraud infographic to learn more ways to help safeguard your business and the funds in your company accounts [cite::171::cite] [cite::172::cite].