Industry organizations estimate check fraud costs companies millions of dollars annually. For 35 years, CheckFree pioneered and innovated positive pay solutions that matched a corporate customer's check issue file with a physical check by using payment amount or check number. Now forgers have begun to alter the payee name on a check to get stolen or duplicated checks processed. The new CheckFree Payee Verification module can significantly reduce the risks to financial institutions and their commercial customers by using image capture technology to pull payee names off of check images.

Payee Verification is integrated with CheckFree's ARP/SMS (Account Reconciliation Package/Service Management System), a check reconciliation and positive pay solution. This new module is integrated with the CheckFree ARP/SMS solution to provide additional fraud protection and positive pay services as well as the ability to specifically reconcile and match the payee name. This enhanced cash management/positive pay tool allows banks to identify altered or unmatched payee paid exception items. If the results conclude the check has been changed or added to, it is rejected as an exception and may be presented to the company for a "pay" or "return" decision with no loss to the customer or the bank.

"With CheckFree Payee Verification, check forgers will not be able to pass checks that do not match bank and merchant data," said Denny Oswalt, senior vice president, North American operations for CheckFree Software. "CheckFree has added Payee Verification to our fraud protection suite of services to protect a bank and its corporate customers and significantly reduce their financial losses."