Banking Tip of the Month: Positive Pay
Starting a business is no small feat. It takes significant investments of your time, energy, and resources. For this reason, you’ll want to protect the money your business makes and make sure that fraudsters never get their hands on your profits.
Positive Pay offers a solution to these worries. Read on to discover how this simple tool keeps your accounts in order and scammers at bay.
Fraud on the Rise
In 2022, the Consumer Sentinel Network, an investigative data-gathering tool utilized by the Federal Trade Commission, received over 2.4 million fraud reports. This explosive number results from a collection of fraud tactics used by criminals over the past year.
Some scammers have posed as fake businesses to trick consumers into voluntarily separating from their money. Other fraudsters have posed as sweepstakes and lotteries with pie-in-the-sky prizes that require sensitive information to complete the entry. Others have received legitimate checks from businesses and altered the deposited amount by adding zeros or moving commas.
With so many scammers out to take your money with many different tactics, small businesses need the right tools to keep their accounts in line and fraudsters out of their money.
Positive Pay: A Secure Way to Distribute Checks
Sometimes, you might need a hand in keeping your payments in line. If you handle high volumes of checks, or if your business pays out checks in dollar amounts that would catch the attention of thieves, then you need the power of Positive Pay. Dream First’s Positive Pay is a simple, secure system that ensures that the checks you issue from your business accounts are the only ones cashed.
The process is simple: business owners start by uploading a complete list of every check they have written in a specific time window to the team at Dream First Bank. We hold onto that list, and it gets reviewed each time a check from your account is cashed. If it matches a check on your list, the transaction proceeds normally. If not, whether it’s because the dollar amount on the check is incorrect or because the check number is off, the transaction does not go through. User's will log in and decision (decide upon) any exception items each day.
Positive Pay works well because it stops several fraud schemes at the source. Criminals holding a legitimate check from your account can’t fudge the numbers to make a bigger profit. At the same time, you won’t be held responsible for fraudulent checks bearing your business’ name.
Another Tool for Your Small Business
Positive Pay is one more way Dream First Bank puts your business first. We also offer several other valuable aids to business owners that get your dream off the ground. Discover business checking services that provide mobile deposits, unlimited check writing, overdraft protection, and more.
If you need help getting started, we’ve got you covered there, too. We offer loan solutions that can assist in opening all types of businesses, from regular commercial ventures to farming and livestock enterprises.
At Dream First Bank, our job is to help make your dreams become a reality. To find out how we can do the same for you, get in touch with us today.