Blog

Written by Andrea Klinedinst, Executive Administrative Assistant

Managing your business’ financials can be a challenge, especially with fraud numbers on the rise. Thankfully there are a lot of online tools out there to help make managing your business financials easier, and there are even some that can help you manage fraud on your accounts. Did you know that MidAmerica National Bank (MNB) has an online banking tool called Positive Pay that will allow you to review and approve checks and ACHs from your business account before they post? This tool can help you prevent unwanted and fraudulent charges and payments before they hit your account, saving you the time and money of dealing with fraud.

What is Positive Pay?

Positive Pay is an online banking fraud prevention tool for your business. There are two different types: Check Positive Pay and ACH Positive Pay. They both integrate with most business accounting software and communicate with MNB’s online banking.

How Does Positive Pay Work?

1. Check Positive Pay

There are many great features of Check Positive Pay, one of which is that it matches checks you have listed for payment in your software with the ones that are actually presented for payment. When checks from your account are presented for payment, Positive Pay compares the details of the checks such as payee, check number, amount, and date with the details on the list you provide. It then flags any mismatches; for example, if you wrote a check for $250.00 and the check presented says $2,500.00, Positive Pay would flag the check. You can then review your checks and any mismatches and either accept or decline them. This helps to greatly cut back on altered, forged, or counterfeit checks and minimizes the financial losses to your account.

2. ACH Positive Pay

Similar to Check Positive Pay, ACH Positive Pay helps you filter out fraud. Instead of uploading a list of checks, with ACH Positive Pay, you can set up filters that will create rules for ACHs coming in or out of your account. Within the filters, you can specify certain dollar amount limits or add certain vendors that you typically do business with or block certain vendors you know are a scam. Positive Pay will then flag any vendors or dollar amounts outside your filters, and you can either accept or decline those transactions, stopping unauthorized withdrawals or vendor fraud.

Positive Pay is a function within your MNB online banking account. Once an MNB employee activates Positive Pay for your account, you can manage it yourself through the online banking portal. There is a monthly fee to use this service; however, it is a powerful tool that can help you prevent financial loss.

If you have any questions or want to sign up to use Positive Pay, call us today at 877-647-5050 or visit one of our banking centers.