How to Protect Your Business from Check and Payments Fraud

You may have seen the recent headline about a massive fraud scheme led by a small group of postal workers. While paper checks can increase the risk of fraud, they're an essential tool for many businesses and their customers. Here are some ways you can protect yourself, your company and your customers.

Use electronic payment methods and services that protect your paper checks.

ACH and wire payments connect payer and payee bank accounts directly, eliminating the many hands that will touch a check before it's deposited and reducing the risk that some someone can intercept it and take advantage of it. Dual controls and ACH blocks and filters will do even more, setting up essential checks and balances and pre-authorizing some transactions and restricting all others.

If you or your customers must use paper checks, consider Positive Pay, which is designed to detect suspicious transactions by matching them against a list of authorized payments you provide. Learn more about all of this at PNFP.com.

Respond quickly to calls from your bank.

When sending a wire or ACH payment, we often call clients to verify that it's real and should go through. If you don't answer our call, we may not be able to process the payment in time. We know this adds another step to your day and may seem unnecessary, but we see it as a major part of our obligation to protecting your finances. We appreciate your understanding and quick action. See the scams you can prevent with this diligence at PNFP.com.

Stay cybersecurity aware and teach your entire team how to safely use email.

We've said it many times, and it will always bear repeating. Your cybersecurity protections are only as strong as your employees allow them to be. Make sure everyone is away of the dangers of phishing and business email compromise. Watch the trends in ransomware and other threats and carefully examine your cybersecurity insurance coverage. Find more resources in our Fraud and Security Learning Center.