According to the most recent Deposit Account Fraud Survey by ABA, check fraud losses amounted to $1.3 billion, 47 percent of fraud loss against bank deposit accounts. While larger corporate customers may have the infrastructure to adapt internally, the small business market segment remains vulnerable without the assistance of their financial institution.

To effectively combat fraud, institutions need a comprehensive set of Treasury Management solutions with fraud detection and prevention capabilities for commercial checks and electronic payments. Such a solution should have account and check validation services for image-based verification and check authentication that are able to combat most check fraud schemes, including invalid MICR lines, forgeries, counterfeiting, and duplications. Financial institutions should ensure the solution has an integrated suite of positive pay, account reconciliation, teller validation, and remote official check printing applications.

With these expanded capabilities, the gap between electronic and check payments for increased fraud protection are bridged. Financial institutions can configure essential components for preventing check fraud on company accounts. Bank users can configure company accounts with specific account and check validation services, which provide image-based verification and authentication of checks. FIs can easily produce reports, make pay or no pay decisions on checks and ACH items, and authorize requests for adding new companies and accounts.

When a specific fraud event occurs, the application will send notifications to quickly inform users who then notify other bank and company users by sending emails or displaying messages, allow institutions to monitor and combat fraud in real-time.

For more information, download the Protecting Business Customers from Fraud, interview document.