Fraud Prevention Tip: Enable online banking text notifications for account login and transaction amount alerts.
Stay Safe
Your business funds may be at risk without Following best practices, including having Positive Pay on your accounts. Get equipped.
Check Fraud Protection
Protect your company from altered, fraudulent and counterfeit check fraud with PyraMax Bank’s secure, automated check-matching services through Business Online Banking (Positive Pay, Payee Positive Pay and Barcode Positive Pay).
Compare checks received to the account numbers, check numbers and dollar amounts to the list you provide with Positive Pay. All three components must match, or the item becomes an “exception.” With Payee Positive Pay, the payee field will also be matched to your issue file. With Barcode Positive Pay, no paid issue file is needed.
You may review all exceptions and choose to pay or reject them through Business Online Banking. Any rejected checks will be returned unpaid, mitigating fraud loss.
ACH Fraud Protection
Control electronic transactions on your accounts with ACH Positive Pay and Debit Blocks. Without these tools in place, all ACH requests received by PyraMax Bank will be transacted on your company’s accounts. NACHA (the Electronic Payments Association) rules specify that if an unauthorized ACH transaction occurs, you must notify the bank to stop the transaction within the designated cutoff time.
- Set criteria to authorize certain ACH debit and/or credits while rejecting others with ACH Positive Pay. Once your company chooses the criteria, any unauthorized transaction will be presented to the company to approve or reject.
- Prevent all ACH debits with ACH Debit Blocks.
Fraud Protection Best Practices
Establish Internal Controls
- Safeguard all user IDs, codes and passwords.
- Review and reconcile accounts daily.
- Utilize dual control and dual approval.
- Develop policies that control how financial transactions are made.
Secure and Maintain Computer Systems
- Do not download or install software from unknown third parties.
- Do not open email or email attachments from an unknown source.
- Ensure firewalls, antivirus, and spyware prevention software are up to date.
- Limit access to computers that are used for sensitive functions.
Restrict Access
- Rotate duties so that no one person is responsible for all financial tasks.
- Personally review your bank statements and restrict access to financial documents, checks, credit cards and cash.
Supervise and Monitor Financial Transactions
- Carefully monitor your business bank accounts for fraudulent activity.
- Adequately supervise all employees who take part in business finances.
- If you ever see anything suspicious, immediately call your Bank Relationship Manager.
- Continually review wires, transfers, payroll and business checks.
Utilize Bank-Provided Fraud Protection Tools
- Reduce the risk of check fraud by utilizing Positive Pay or Check Block services.
- Decrease the risk of electronic fraud with ACH Positive Pay and Debit Blocks, which allows you to prevent unauthorized ACH transactions on commercial accounts.
- Adopt strong forms of authentication and added layers of security when using online banking with tokens and out of bank authentication.
Streamline Cash Management Services
- Eliminate supplying payment instructions via phone or fax.
- Outsource accounts payables and receivables; consider a bank provided Lockbox.
- Increase use of electronic and card payments to decrease paper check disbursements.
- Do not provide bank account numbers to new, untrusted vendors for electronic payment.
- Use separate accounts for different payment methods and segregate check-writing activities.