Tuesday, June 7, 2011

What is Positive Pay?

Positive Pay is an anti-fraud service offered by virtually all commercial banks to help prevent unauthorized checks from clearing your checking account. Positive Pay is designed for businesses that want to prevent check fraud and want their financial institution to help monitor against suspicious check activity.

This is how it works: Your company will be required to send a file of issued checks to your financial institution each day checks are written by your company. Your financial institution will provide you with the file format requirements needed to submit the checks. This file will then be imported into your bank’s computer system. When those issued checks are presented for payment at your bank, they are compared electronically against the list of transmitted checks. The bank will match the account number, check number, and dollar amount of each check transmitted for payment, and all three components of the check must match or it will not be paid. If a check presented to the bank is not found or the amounts do not match, your bank will mark the check as an 'exception' and not clear the check through your account. Many banks offer you the opportunity to review the daily exceptions, as some exceptions may be legitimate.

If you want to prevent unauthorized checks from clearing your checking account, contact C&G Consulting for more information on how to implement Positive Pay in your business.

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