With check fraud reaching billions of dollars per year, consumers and businesses alike have good reason to be wary of this form of payment.
Checks contain essential financial information that’s easily stolen and manipulated into other forms of cybercrime, and paper checks are incredibly easy to steal. Even with an overall decline in the use of paper checks, this payment method is still favored, especially by small businesses who may lack the technical skills to implement an electronic clearing method.
FLCBank cares about your business and its bottom line. Here are a few tips to help protect your business from check fraud.
Check Fraud Prevention
To mitigate risk and protect revenue streams, businesses can take some simple steps to guard against check fraud, no matter how large or small.
- Train Employees: Training your point-of-sale workforce is essential, from updating security passwords to bring-your-own-device policies. These simple steps can go a long way toward stopping various forms of cybercrime. In addition, providing employees with samples of check forgeries and counterfeits. Training your point-of-sale workforce is essential.
- Keep Software Up to Date: Antivirus and malware protection is ever-evolving. Keep devices and software patches refreshed often. This also includes securing your WiFi network with strong passwords and data encryption for those working remotely.
- Check Policies: A crystal clear check policy — both for accepting checks from the public and for those employees authorized to write checks on your company’s behalf — is a must. Items to consider for your policy include dollar limits for consumers, which employees have access to checks, and who can order new checks. Keep physical checks in a secure, locked location.
- Consider Treasury Management Services: Partnering with a reputable financial institution to access state-of-the-art technology can help you clear checks quickly — and spot fraudulent transactions.
Benefits of Positive Pay from FLCBank
FLCBank provides Positive Pay service as part of its treasury management package. Positive Pay helps you spot fraudulent checking issues before they can snowball into big-dollar dilemmas. The service alerts your business to potential fraud and uses high-tech algorithms to compare incoming checks against similar transactions to spot fakes.
Positive Pay will send automated alerts directly to you, allowing you to honor or deny questionable checks with the click of a button. This helps streamline your reconciliations and workflow and reduces your risk of loss due to check fraud.
FLCBank, headquartered in Jacksonville, FL, with full-service branches throughout the region, offers a comprehensive suite of treasury management services. In addition to Positive Pay, our high-tech solutions can assist your accounting department with automated clearing house transactions and wire transfers, deposits, and sweep and lockbox services. Contact one of our financial experts today to learn more about how we can help you protect your business from cybercrime and check fraud