Financial institutions (FIs) are turning to fraud-prevention methods, with check positive pay being one of them, to stop fraudsters in their tracks and provide peace of mind and security to business users. To get a sense of the scale of the problem, consider that check fraud was 47% ($1.3 billion) of all industry deposit account fraud according to a recent American Bankers Association study. While many consumers no longer use paper checks, they continue to be a cornerstone for businesses with almost 3.8 million checks collected annually through the Federal Reserve with an average value of approximately $2,000. If you’re looking for fraud protection and an additional source of income, it is worth exploring a check positive pay solution.
What are the benefits of check positive pay?
Check positive pay is a fraud mitigation service that provides early detection of fraudulent, altered, or counterfeit checks through a daily verification of checks presented for payment against an account holder’s check register. FIs that implement a check positive pay solution are able to provide their clients with the protection they need while reducing manual processes and generating significant ROI for the FI.
“FIs that offer a check positive pay solution are able to better protect their business users from check fraud by allowing them to block unauthorized transactions and eliminate the need to close accounts in the event of unauthorized checks clearing.”
Why is there a lack of adoption from businesses for a check positive pay solution?
There are two key barriers to clients adopting check positive pay services. Requiring clients to submit their issue item list in a format specified by the FI and making sure the location of information and check stock is conducive for payee positive pay have many clients abandoning the service before they even get started. FIs that implement a more modern solution can remove these barriers to adoption and improve the client experience.
Why are FIs unable to scale a check positive pay solution to more customers?
Many FIs have difficulty in scaling the solution downstream to small businesses and only offer check positive pay to larger, commercial businesses. The first step in bringing check positive pay to more customers is to make the implementation process easier for clients to send issue data and capitalize on the advances in payee name comparison technologies that eliminate the need for “boxing” the location of the payee name on a client’s proposed check stock. FI’s need to reduce the number of systems being used to deliver check positive pay services in order to simplify the client setup process, and they need an all-in-one system that allows the pre-scrub exception process to occur within one screen.
“If you’re using more than one system to deliver check positive pay services and/or account reconciliation services to your clients, you’re paying too much, doing too much, and sacrificing a real-time experience.”
What is a reasonable ROI expectation for a check positive pay solution?
FIs that implement Alkami’s check positive pay solution, see significant ROI. In fact, our FIs are able to generate revenues that are at least three times our monthly fee per account. Our check positive pay solution can be purchased as a standalone module or can be coupled with ACH positive pay for a seamless user experience, which can further improve ROI for your FI.
If you are ready to dramatically reduce cost, improve operational efficiencies, and increase client adoption and revenue, contact us today.
