Checks remained the payment method most impacted by fraud activity (66 percent), reports from the 2021 Association for Financial Professionals Payments Fraud and Control Survey. Financial institutions encounter deposit fraud in many ways, including counterfeits, forgeries, alterations, serial numbers, stop payments and check kiting.
While many organizations are rightly focused on combating digital fraud, fraudsters are also still dialed in to check fraud. Improving efforts to combat check fraud should start with financial institutions utilizing extensive mathematical and machine learning methods to analyze transactional data, check stock and signatures to identify potential suspicious items and corresponding risk exposure. Effective check fraud prevention will help FIs evade exploiters and their newest innovative fraud schemes.