Reduce your risk and exposure to check fraud with Positive Pay.

If your business accepts a high volume of checks, it is crucial that payment fraud protections are put into place. According to the 2024 AFP Payments Fraud and Control Survey, 80 percent of respondents report that their organizations were victims of attempted or actual payments fraud activity in 2023, and 65 percent of respondents reported that checks continue to be the payment method most vulnerable to fraud.

Lately, available antifraud measures have grown as well. One advantage to antifraud measures provided by California Bank & Trust is that they can be integrated into the existing accounts you already hold. The Positive Pay system compares checks presented for payment against your check issue information. Discrepancies are reported to you as exceptions for review and a decision to pay or return the item(s). It's an effective tool for small businesses, a convenient and efficient way to fight back.

The automated Positive Pay system compares checks issued for payment to your authorized check payment information.

Minimize losses and wasted time with fraud-fighting controls

Because checks are extremely vulnerable to fraud, you’ll want to defend against altered, counterfeit, and fraudulent checks. You can help protect yourself by establishing control over what items pay against your account.

Your check could fall into the wrong hands and the fraudster may alter the payee and amount in an attempt to cash the check for themselves, or they may copy your account and routing numbers to produce counterfeit checks that they can then write for themselves.

You want the bank to have all the information on the checks you write. If a check is presented for payment and doesn’t match any of the information the bank has, you’ll want the bank to discover that something is wrong. For example, let’s say the information you submitted for check #1234 has the payee as ABC Corp., for the amount of $250, but when check #1234 is presented to the bank for payment it has a payee of a false company for $1,000. Our service lets us know that the check is altered.

Two ways to battle banking fraud
1. Check Positive Pay with Payee Match verifies payee names and detects alterations to the Payee Name in addition to account number, amount, and check number.

2. ACH Positive Pay prevents unauthorized ACH transactions from posting to your account. Future ACH items can be preauthorized to post automatically. It can also be customized to limit permissions and user account access. Our Mobile Positive Pay solution allows you to review and authorize payments on your mobile device to battle ACH fraud.

The fraud protection features of Positive Pay

Help prevent being taken advantage of by fraudsters and save valuable time required to unravel the fraud paper trail.

Use improved controls provided by Positive Pay to help stop unauthorized transactions from clearing your account. It includes protection against payee alteration and counterfeit checks.

Positive Pay gives tellers access to the most current check information available when cashing items so they can identify information that seems off.

Four features are used from your own back office to help you fight fraud.

1. It includes a check-issued file upload and ACH filter for authorized transactions, accepting most file formats.
2. It provides layered user permissions and the ability to limit user account access.
3. It enables account reconciliation and easy reporting that can be imported to payable systems.
4. It lets you retain ownership of users and permissions within your company.

Positive Pay can also save you money by limiting potential losses and legal fees by returning unauthorized items quickly, managing payment risk from fraudulent and electronic ACH items and can give you a helping hand in the fight against fraud.

Get more information to start your fraud fight

To learn more about how California Bank & Trust Treasury Management can help your business, schedule an appointment, or visit Treasury Management today.