Our Positive Pay Service offers your business powerful fraud protection against check and ACH fraud.

As business leaders/owners, we continue to face many challenges.  Challenging times often are a catalyst to increased fraudulent activities, and unfortunately, statistics state that eventually every business will be impacted by fraud.

At 1^st State Bank, we are seeing an increasing level of fraudulent activities. Specific activities include wire fraud along with check & ACH fraud.

1^st State Bank has recently implemented procedures to dual authenticate wire transfers including verification of information and verbal authorization of outgoing wires.  These changes have significantly elevated the security of these activities, all in an effort to protect our customers.

You may not be aware of a service that 1^st State Bank offers to protect business customers against both check and ACH fraud.  The service is called Positive Pay, and it allows a business to monitor their deposit account daily for discrepancies and ensure that funds are not released without prior customer approval.  This service is $30 per month for an account ($10 each additional account), very economical when considering the potential impact of a single occurrence of check or ACH fraud.

Businesses are not afforded the same protections as consumers against fraud.  The time permitted to a business to recapture stolen funds via a fraudulent check or ACH is less than 48 hours.  This is one reason why it is so critical to catch fraud before it happens.

Beyond the use of Positive Pay, there are several things a business can do to better protect themselves against check and ACH fraud, including;

• Daily monitoring of account transactions/activities utilizing our free Online Banking system
• Use of deposit Account Alerts, a free Bank service
• Reviewing electronic check images and ACH items for accuracy
• Ensuring check stock is not accessible other than to those authorized to use
• Secondary review of outgoing checks by an individual other than person responsible for writing check
• Limit the number of persons with access to banking activities
• Safeguarding account information like an account number, debit cards, passwords and any other related information
• Use of a dedicated computer for electronic banking
• Closure of an account that has been compromised

If you would like additional information or details on service offerings of 1^st State Bank, please reach out to your Business Lender or Branch Manager,

Here’s How It Works 

• All authorized ACH and check payments are entered in the online register
• Daily payments presented to your business account are verified against the register
• Payments not found in the register are flagged as exceptions
• Daily notifications are sent to your business to review all exceptions and approve or decline the payment

Allowing only authorized payments to post to the account