Imagine this scenario — The owner of a local small business pays their employees with payroll checks. A common practice. However, an employee who was recently fired has decided to try stealing from the business. This former worker creates fake paychecks and uses them to make some hefty purchases. Before the business owner catches on, the fraudulent checks are processed and cause massive damage to their finances. They struggle for years to fully recover. Eventually, the business closes and even more people are out of work.
This scary situation could happen to you if your business isn’t protected.
Introducing Positive Pay No entrepreneur wants to deal with fraud, especially when it could mean the life or death of the business. The good news is this kind of fraud is largely preventable with services offered by Starion Bank.
Positive Pay gives you full control of the transactions in and out of your business accounts. It also offers alerts for potentially fraudulent activity, allowing you to stop it before taking a financial loss.
Here’s how Positive Pay works for your business:
- You provide Starion with a list of the checks and ACH payments you have issued. That includes some details such as the check number, date, and amount of each transaction.
- The check or ACH will be presented for payment, and Starion will compare the information with the list you provided. This is done through a secure, automated nightly process.
- If the information matches, the transaction is processed. But if there are discrepancies with the provided data (e.g., check number, date, amount), the transaction is flagged, and your business is immediately alerted.
- You may approve or reject the transaction for payment and further investigate if you believe there is a mistake or potential fraud.
Built for Business of All Sizes While the task of providing information to the bank may sound like a bit of extra time, the convenience, safety, and reporting offered by Positive Pay easily outweigh any initial questions or concerns.
Our secure platform lets you quickly and easily submit data files to Starion listing all your issued checks and ACH transactions. You can also define rules regarding how ACH payments from your account will be authorized. For example, you can decide which companies get paid or set the maximum dollar amount for payments.
Reconciling is designed to save valuable staff time, so you aren’t digging around to find small discrepancies in your accounts. Positive Pay offers detailed reports that are designed to meet the account reconciliation requirements of even the most complex businesses. In other words, the service and features can scale as your business grows.
Let Starion Bank Help Your Business Stay Safe Positive Pay is a valuable tool for protecting your business finances. But no system is foolproof. Your staff will still need to be diligent in reviewing any notifications. As both fraudsters and security technology evolve, it’s important to stay up-to-date on the latest security measures and strategies.
