How Your Bank Can Help Protect Your Business from Fraud

A common myth is that fraud prevention starts and ends with a complex password. While important, your logins are only one piece of the puzzle. In fact, the strongest defense comes with a combination of updated and secure tech, internal controls, unique passwords, and banking tools.

Fraud prevention requires ongoing and consistent maintance, and your bank can provide the additional safeguards that help verify payments, control account access, and identify suspicious activity before it becomes a problem.

So, what does that look like in practice? It starts with using the safeguards available through your bank, including Positive Pay and enhanced security controls that help protect your accounts from unauthorized activity. 

Protect Payments with Positive Pay

Many banks, including First Financial, offer Positive Pay services to help protect your business from check and ACH fraud. No matter if it’s a counterfeit check or an unauthorized ACH payment, Positive Pay services help you review and verify transactions before they’re processed, giving you more confidence that payments leaving your account are legitimate:

1. Check Positive Pay — This service compares checks presented for payment against the checks your business has issued. If details do not match, you have the opportunity to review the item before a decision is made.
2. Reverse Check Positive Pay — With Reverse Check Positive Pay, your business reviews checks presented for payment and decides whether each item should be approved or returned.
3. ACH Positive Pay — ACH Positive Pay service helps your business monitor electronic payments by allowing you to review ACH activity, manage authorized transactions, and identify potentially unauthorized payments before funds leave your account.
4. Check Verification — Check your checks. This service provides an added safeguard by helping confirm the authenticity of checks before they are accepted, reducing the risk of them being altered or counterfeit.

Enhanced Security Controls

Banks also offer security controls that help your business manage who can access accounts, initiate transactions, and approve payments. These tools are essential in supporting stronger internal controls and reduce the risk of errors, misuse, or unauthorized activity.

1. Dual Administrators — Assigning two administrators helps separate responsibilities for managing your online banking users and permissions, providing more oversight over your accounts.
2. Dual Payment Approvals — Requiring two people to approve payments before they’re processed creates an extra checkpoint that can help prevent unauthorized or fraudulent transactions.
3. User Entitlement Management — Not every employee needs access to every banking feature. User Entitlement Management allows you to assign permissions based on an employee’s responsibilities, helping protect sensitive account information.
4. Multifactor Authentication — As previously mentioned, a good password is a good first step, but it shouldn’t be your only one. Multifactor authentication adds another layer of security by requiring users to verify their identity before signing in.

Fraud Awareness and Education

Even with the right banking tools in place, your employees play an important role in protecting your business.

Regular fraud awareness training can help your team recognize phishing emails, payment scams, business email compromise attempts and other common tactics before they lead to financial loss. The more informed your employees are, the better prepared they’ll be to respond when something doesn’t seem right.

Looking for more fraud prevention tips? Visit First Financial Bank's Fraud Awareness Hub at bankatfirst.com/fraud-awareness for resources, scam alerts, and other articles designed to help your business stay informed.