Consumer protection, business, risk management, and insurance professionals all point to the same conclusion when it comes to check fraud:
Check fraud is not something that can be avoided. It is something you and your business will need to address.
Rising numbers
According to the 2023 AFP Payments Fraud and Control Survey, 65% of organizations were victims of payment fraud attacks. Of those, 63% of cases involved fraud activity via checks.
Check fraud does not discriminate by type of business or geography. Last year, criminals targeted more than 25 GRB customers for over half a million dollars in attempted check fraud. Positive Pay caught and deescalated all of these attacks.
Check washing is one of the oldest tricks in the book, but with the rise of new video-sharing apps, such as TikTok, a would-be scammer can learn a variety of methods to wash a check in the time it takes to read this article.
In 2022, businesses lost more than $8.8 billion dollars to check fraud, according to the Federal Trade Commission. That represented an increase of 30% from 2021.
Check fraud does not discriminate by type of business, size of business, or geography.
Preventing Check Fraud with Positive Pay
The best thing you can do to prevent check fraud is to stop writing checks. Of course, this is not always possible when running a business. The second-best thing you can do is enroll in Positive Pay.
GRB offers Positive Pay, free of charge, to all commercial banking customers. It safeguards against check fraud by implementing a system of validation by cross-referencing them against a pre-approved list of issued checks. Any discrepancies in the checks being cashed are flagged for review by Positive Pay. A business can review Positive Pay items can happen from anywhere in the world, via your mobile device or computer, in a matter of seconds.
Positive Pay is simply the best defense against check fraud, and it costs nothing to enroll. Contact your GRB Relationship Manager or our Commercial Relationship Associate Team for more information about Positive Pay.
Criminals continue to find creative ways to attack businesses. Positive Pay makes sure that every check cashed is one actually written by your business.