When Amy Mielke’s business banker suggested she add a tool called Positive Pay to her business account, she wasn't sure if it was worth her time. 

Positive Pay helps protect businesses from fraud by identifying potentially fraudulent check or ACH transactions. With Check Positive Pay, businesses can compare checks they’ve authorized with checks presented for payment. If the payment information doesn’t match, businesses can choose whether or not to approve the check. 

Amy, a controller at Olaf Anderson Construction in Fargo, hadn’t seen much fraud targeting the business, and didn’t think Positive Pay was necessary. She had always manually reviewed accounts at the end of each month, and thought that would be sufficient to catch any potential issues. 

Heidi Fritz, SVP/treasury management officer at Bell and Amy’s business banker, continued to recommend Positive Pay as an option, especially as fraud attempts have become more common in recent years. 

“Often, businesses think fraud won’t happen to them until it does,” Heidi said. “But we say it’s not a matter of if, it’s when fraud can occur.” 

One day, after Heidi reached out to let Amy know she was seeing fraud targeting several of her other clients, Amy agreed to implement Check Positive Pay. It didn't take long for the tool to catch a major fraud attempt and save the company potentially thousands of dollars. 

Catching Fraud Before It's Too Late

A few months after implementing Positive Pay, Amy received an email about a check that didn’t match. 

“It looked like our check, but you could see someone had changed the name and the dollar amount,” she said. 

Fraudsters had somehow gotten ahold of one of the company’s checks, altered important payment details, and tried to submit it for payment. 

Amy denied the check through Positive Pay, but then over the next several days, the fraudsters tried sending more counterfeit checks through. 

“The next day, there was one more, and one more the next day,” Amy said. “That happened for about a week, and then it just stopped when they realized they couldn't get through.” 

Peace of Mind for Businesses

Without Positive Pay, Amy knows she likely wouldn’t have realized what was happening until the end of the month, potentially resulting in significant financial losses for the company. 

“With so many checks to review each month, by the time I caught one that was fraudulent, it would likely be too late to do anything about it,” she said. 

That’s exactly why Bell recommends Positive Pay to its business customers, Heidi said. 

"It just takes one check out there in circulation to get into the hands of a criminal," she added. “They could do pretty significant damage if a business doesn't have Positive Pay.” 

Looking back, Amy is glad she took Heidi’s suggestion, and would recommend any business consider adding Positive Pay to give themselves peace of mind. 

“You don’t know when fraud is coming, and you don’t know how it’s coming,” she said. “Positive Pay is well worth the effort.”