Add your feed to SetSticker.com! Promote your sites and attract more customers. It costs only 100 EUROS per YEAR.
Pleasant surprises on every page! Discover new articles, displayed randomly throughout the site. Interesting content, always a click away
CHERRY
The Easiest Way To Pay!Payments Integration Software Avoids Mistakes 27 Jan 2020, 6:38 pm
How Payments Integration Software Helps Avoid Accounting Mistakes
By Shtar
With the advent of easy to use accounting software, bookkeeping has never been easier for small to midsized businesses, but that doesn’t mean it has eliminated costly accounting mistakes. While some errors have only a marginal effect on a company’s financials, others are more serious and may have a significant impact by misrepresenting a company’s real financial health. While a trained accountant can help keep the books in order, there are things business owners can do to ensure their financial record keeping is done correctly. With payments integration software, many common errors can be avoided.
Manual entry
Accounting software helps businesses manage their finances but still requires the entry of data. While account software simplifies this process, it’s still mostly manual for many small to midsize companies. Data is collected and input into the accounting system by hand and because these are manual processes, bookkeepers can run into errors when inputting payment data into the accounting applications. If information is entered incorrectly, vendors can be paid the wrong amount, or the wrong vendor can be charged for a transaction.
Double entry is one of the more common errors and means doing the entry twice. For companies processing a high volume of transactions, it can be easy for entries to be duplicated. Researching these errors can be costly, causing monetary losses for the time needed to research and correct the mistakes.
Human error when entering data is a common cause of both monetary and productivity loss in most businesses. Preventing all data entry errors is impossible but you can put procedures in place to ensure incorrect entries are identified and fixed quickly.
One way to solve many of these errors is with payments integration software. Automating data into the accounting system helps eliminate errors from manual entries and makes it easier for businesses to manage their bookkeeping efforts. By having payment processing integrated into the accounting software application, payments can be automatically applied to the general ledger or credited to an invoice. This simple process reduces human errors, eliminates double data entry, and helps businesses more easily reconcile their books.
Reconciliation
Reconciling your accounts regularly is important to make sure that your account balances are in sync with your bank account balances. The regular practice of reconciliation can help identify any discrepancies before they become a problem that can distort your true financial picture. Performing this process on balance sheet accounts, at least monthly, is vital to a small business’ success. Most accounting software has a reconciliation feature available in the system, which makes it easier to review transactions against your bank statements.
Without a doubt, manual reconciliation is a very inefficient and demanding process. According to a survey by the accounting firm Ernst & Young, up to 59% of a bookkeeper’s time is spent dealing with these transaction intensive processes. When looking at the data closely, it turns out that 95% of this effort is wasted on transactions that already match. This takes effort away from problem entries that actually require attention. And, if you wait until the end of the year to reconcile your accounts, it can be even more difficult to find errors.
The benefit of automatic payment reconciliation is that it helps increase the accuracy of the reconciliation process to simplify and speed up your reconciliations while freeing the bookkeeper’s time. The software can deal with repetitive tasks like transaction matching, giving you the ability to drill down on open entries or exceptions that require additional attention.
Secure digital payments are as easy as writing a check. Sign-up today!
The post Payments Integration Software Avoids Mistakes appeared first on CHERRY.
Automated Transactions Improves the Bottom Line 23 Dec 2019, 10:03 pm
Automating Transactions Improves the Bottom Line
By Shtar
Major corporations around the globe have accepted that automated transactions are essential for staying relevant and profitable in the modern world. Technology has enabled digital transactions to take place securely and consumers have now come to expect the ease of automation in all of their transactions.
While consumers and many industries are fully on board with automated transactions, the banking industry has been more hesitant to embrace the new technology. Given the large amounts of money that banks deal with, security is a constant concern. And even banks that have added mobile deposit and mobile bill pay features on their apps and websites still tend to see implementing these modern measures as an obligation, not as a potential boon to their business.
What banks do not yet realize is that automation is not just necessary for staying relevant, rather, automation can also help them improve their bottom line. Automation enables transactions to take place instantly, eliminating the hassles of cash and paper checks. By switching to automated transactions, banks can eliminate the time it takes to print, mail and deposit checks and allow their employees to focus on other tasks. Additionally, every transaction made with a paper check costs a bank the price of printing, a stamp, and an envelope – automated transactions save banks the money they spend on these costs, too.
Adding up the cost of labor, printing, an envelope, and a stamp, the cost of processing an individual paper check is still just pennies. But when multiplied by the number of checks that a bank processes in a year, the cost of using paper checks is significant. For banks, every penny that can be saved on every transaction ultimately has a significant effect on their bottom line. Switching to automated transactions allows banks to cut a major expense.
Additionally, automating transactions may help banks reduce the amount of money they lose to fraud. While conventional wisdom says that automated digital transactions are fundamentally unsafe, AI technology has now become just as good, if not better, at detecting fraud as humans are. Check fraud is on the rise, too – automating transactions eliminates the potential for fraud to be committed with paper checks.
And automation does not just benefit banks. As the rise in popularity of peer-to-peer payment apps and online shopping proves, consumers love the convenience of automated transactions. Consumers are now more likely to make a transaction when they can make it digitally.
This means that consumers are more likely to make a transaction with their bank when they can make it digitally. By giving their customers the option to automate their transactions, banks will increase their customers’ engagement and the number of transactions they make, ultimately improving their bottom lines.
Banks should embrace automated transactions because the move to automation is inevitable, but also because the move to automation is profitable. By automating their transactions, banks can cut pennies off of every transaction, which amounts to huge savings overall. Additionally, by acknowledging consumers’ preference for automated transactions, banks can increase the total number of transactions made with them. Together, these benefits of automating transactions will have a significant positive effect on banks’ bottom lines.
Secure digital payments are as easy as writing a check. Sign-up today!
The post Automated Transactions Improves the Bottom Line appeared first on CHERRY.
Automation Will Bring More Deposits To Banks 23 Dec 2019, 9:35 pm
Automation Will Bring More Deposits To Banks
By Shtar
In order to grow their number of deposits, banks should increase their customer base. Right?
It is typically assumed that in order to grow their deposits, banks need to focus on attracting new customers. By spending resources on marketing and developing flashy new products, banks will ultimately gain customers, deposits, and revenue.
While it is true that attracting new customers is one way to boost revenue, it is not the only way. Rather, banks can also boost their revenue by increasing the number of deposits that their current customers make.
In the push to build their customer base, banks tend to lose sight of the ways that their existing platforms and systems can be optimized for their current customers. Changing processes is difficult, especially for institutions like banks for whom security is paramount.
But if a bank’s goal is to increase its revenue, then change is worth it. New automated transaction technology is a customer’s dream, as it allows customers to deposit checks, transfer money, and more all with a few taps on their smartphone screens. Automated transactions have the chance to majorly boost the number of deposits that customers make with their banks, and therefore, boost their banks’ revenues. However, such revenue increases will only happen if banks decide to make a change and invest in improving their existing platforms.
In order to understand the potential benefits of automation, consider Venmo. Venmo is an app that allows people to make automatic transactions to their friends and has become one of the world’s most popular payment apps. In 2018, $62 billionwere sent through the app, and that total has already been surpassed through Q3 of 2019. Venmo’s success is not a result of savvy marketing or brilliant new technology. Rather, the app’s success is rooted in its easy-to-navigate user interface and the convenience that it offers to its customers.
Likewise, consumers have enthusiastically endorsed automation in banking simply because of the convenience that the technology offers. As the success of Venmo proves, consumers are more likely to use their banks for transactions when transactions can be made easily and automatically.
And automated transactions are not the only application of automation technology that can benefit consumers (and therefore their banks). Automation in customer service can offer consumers faster resolutions to their banking problems and a higher level of personalization than they were previously accustomed to. AI can now solve customer service issues quicker than bank employees can. When banks embrace customer service automation, their customers no longer have to wait in long phone queues to speak to a bank representative – their problems can instead be resolved instantly. When automation is applied to customer service, it improves levels of customer satisfaction and frees bank employees up to focus on other tasks.
In short, automation is a win-win for both banks and their customers. Consumers love the ease of automated transactions, and therefore, consumers love and are more likely to make deposits with banks that offer automated transactions. Additionally, automation has the potential to improve customer service interactions. The evidence is in and the ball is now in the banking industry’s court – will banks say yes to increasing their total deposits by embracing automation?
Secure digital payments are as easy as writing a check. Sign-up today!
The post Automation Will Bring More Deposits To Banks appeared first on CHERRY.
Bank Fintech Collaboration Provides Opportunity 23 Dec 2019, 9:33 pm
Bank Fintech Collaboration
By Shtar
In 2016, financial technology companies raised a combined $28.4 billion – over five times the amount they had raised during 2010. Such an increase indicates that fintech is becoming a major disruptor in the financial industry. Should the industry be focused more on bank fintech collaboration?
While it is true that fintech is changing the financial industry from top to bottom, banks have no need to be apprehensive about these changes. Rather, fintech can help banks increase their overall revenue – but only if banks are willing to accept fintech companies as collaborators, not competitors.
Think about credit cards, internet banking, and contactless payment technology. None of these technologies existed 75 years ago and all of them were made possible through collaborations between banks and fintech companies. Each of these technologies has made transactions easier for consumers and businesses alike, and thus, these technologies have increased the total number of transactions made. Banks that had the foresight to integrate these technologies into their systems have reaped major rewards.
The fintech companies that are disrupting the financial industry today are doing so by offering faster, more secure, and typically digital-only banking transactions. Shtar.com, for example, makes payments easier and safer by interfacing commerce and accounting applications with bank payment platforms.
In order to respond to fintech companies’ developments, large banks may instinctively ask their in-house teams to mimic fintech technology. But when banks insist on managing their technological offerings on their own, they undervalue the unique benefits that fintech companies can offer them.
Fintech companies use their lack of legacy infrastructure to their advantage. While major banks have large existing fixed costs, fintech companies are usually digital-first and consumer-centric. Fintech companies therefore usually have much lower cost-structures. They can take risks and innovate for much less money than it costs banks to do the same.
Banks may update their systems monthly or even less regularly, but fintech companies can offer automatic updates. Because of their lack of legacy infrastructure, fintech companies’ updates and product launches can occur much faster than banks’.
Additionally, given their digital nature, fintech companies are able to use predictive modeling and analytical tools better than traditional banks can. With predictions of consumer behavior, fintech companies can then draw conclusions that are tailored to meet the needs of each individual consumer. Personalization is a major draw for consumers, and so technology that enables banks to offer more personalized services should not be undervalued.
Finally, fintech companies have created several new business structures that can be major boons to the financial industry. Peer-to-peer (P2P) digital transactions have been popularized by fintech companies. Likewise, fintech has popularized crowdsourcing and social network scoring. It is in banks’ best interest to invest in these new business structures.
In order to be successful, fintech companies need banks’ name recognition and their customers’ trust. While fintech companies can innovate much more than banks can, their technological advancements are worthless if they cannot find banks and consumers to back them. Fintech companies cannot afford to compete with major banks.
But when fintech companies partner with banks, all of fintech’s innovations can be scaled up to benefit the bank. Banks need fintech companies’ innovations and cost and time efficiencies in order to stay competitive. And so when banks and fintech companies collaborate, everyone wins.
Secure digital payments are as easy as writing a check. Sign-up today!
The post Bank Fintech Collaboration Provides Opportunity appeared first on CHERRY.
Check Fraud is Highest With Paper Checks 21 Nov 2019, 3:44 pm
Check Fraud is Highest with Paper Checks
By Shtar
Congratulations! You are a website’s lucky 10,000th visitor of the day and they are awarding you a million dollars – or so the pop-up on your computer screen says. Could this be the beginning of a check fraud?
Click through the window, deposit the check they send you, and you will be met with a request from the sender to wire a little bit of that award money back. If all goes according to the scammers’ plan, you will send them money in return before the check that you deposited inevitably bounces, leaving you to pay your bit of return money out of pocket.
Fall for this scheme, and you will join the ranks of the tens of thousands of Americans who are victims of check fraud every year. The number of checks that Americans write is falling every year, and yet, reports of check fraud are steadily rising.
Determining the exact number of cases of check fraud in a given year is extremely difficult, as check fraud can take many forms. There is forgery (signing a check without authorization), theft (stealing checks), paper hanging (writing checks on closed accounts), and counterfeiting (illegally printing checks with information from the victim’s account). And let’s not forget forget washing (chemically removing information from a check) and paper kiting (writing a check for nonexistent funds, then writing another check with nonexistent funds from a different account to cover the first check).
All told: paper checks are an incredibly unsafe method of payment. While the exact number of cases of check fraud (and the exact amount of money lost due to check fraud) will remain unknown, the National Consumers League believes check fraud to be the number one most common type of scam in America.
While pop-up window scams targeting individuals are often the first thing that come to mind when we think about check fraud, businesses are also highly susceptible to check fraud in all of its various forms. According to a survey conducted by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners in 2016, a typical business loses five percent of its revenue to fraud in any given year. Asset misappropriation, which includes most forms of check fraud, is the biggest contributor to this loss of revenue.
To protect yourself and your business from fraud, you can keep your checkbook in a place where thieves could not find it, monitor your bank account regularly, and use fraud prevention pens that protect your checks from washing. You can take care to mail checks from the post office (and not from your mailbox, where thieves could steal them).
Still, there is no way around the fact that checks are a fundamentally unsafe method of payment. For in order to make a payment to a business, a check must pass through the hands of postal workers, employees of the recipient business, and bankers. Should any of those people pause to take a look at the check in their hands, they would see your name (or your business’), address, phone number, bank’s name, bank routing number, and signature. Anyone could easily commit check fraud with this information – and again, all that it takes to access it is a glance at one of your checks.
It is no wonder that checks are declining in popularity. While they were once the only non-cash payment instrument available, this is no longer the case. With today’s widespread electronic payment options, there is now no need to expose yourself to potential scammers by making payments with paper checks. Electronic payment has proven itself to be a safer method of payment, and so the time has come for us to leave checks and fraud behind.
Secure digital payments are as easy as writing a check. Sign-up today!
The post Check Fraud is Highest With Paper Checks appeared first on CHERRY.
Paper Checks Cost and the Hidden Risks 21 Nov 2019, 3:11 pm
The Hidden Costs and Risks of Paper Checks
By Shtar
Paper checks have long played a major role in B2B (business to business) transactions. Businesses first started using paper checks in 1865 to replace cash in large-value transactions, making them the first non-cash payment instrument in the United States. And until credit cards became widespread in the 1950s, paper checks remained the overall most common non-cash payment instrument but what is the impact of paper checks cost?
Developments in technology since 1865 have greatly expanded the options for payment systems. Today, all B2B transactions could take place digitally, eliminating the need for antiquated paper checks. Still, paper checks remain the most popular payment method for American B2B transactions. According to the Association for Finance Professionals’ 2019 Electronic Payments Survey, 42 percent of B2B transactions still take place using paper checks. A combination of ACH, credit cards, and ePayables account for the rest of today’s B2B transactions.
42 percent of B2B transactions is an all-time low for paper checks, down from 74 percent in 2007. However, this rate of decline has slowed in recent years. Why are so many businesses stubbornly holding onto paper checks in the face of less expensive, more efficient, and safer options?
Businesses that have not yet switched to electronic payment are likely so accustomed to the hassles of paper checks that they do not realize the hidden costs of paper check transactions. In order to make a B2B transaction with a paper check, a business must first spend money on printers, ink cartridges, envelopes, and postage. Given the volume of checks that some businesses process, these costs can together have a very real effect on a business’ bottom line.
Additionally, the inefficiency of paper checks presents more major hidden costs. In order to process paper checks, a business’ employees must take the time to open envelopes, deposit them at the bank, and then follow up on unpaid invoices or bounced checks. Paper checks can have long clearing periods, too, which deprives businesses of capital that they would have easier and faster access to through digital payments.
All told, Bank of America estimates that every paper check a business processes comes with an aggregate cost of somewhere between $4 and $20. MineralTree Inc. estimates that paper checks together cost American businesses between $26 billion and $54 billion in 2010.
In their responses to the Association for Finance Professionals’ 2015 Payments Cost Benchmarking Survey, over two-thirds of finance professionals said that they would transition from paper checks to electronic payments if doing so came with a cost-benefit. Given that there is a clear cost-benefit to moving away from paper checks, it seems that these finance professionals do not realize how much paper checks are actually costing them. Paper checks are so deeply ingrained in many business’ payment systems that these businesses are oblivious to their hidden costs.
And then there are safety issues: paper checks are still a top target for fraudsters. In 2017, almost three-quarters of businesses were affected by check fraud.
Every check that a business writes shows its name, account number, and routing number. With just this information, fraudsters can gain access to a business’ checking account and use their funds as they please. And given how many different people handle a check on its way from business to business – from the payer’s administration to postal workers to the payee’s employees to the bank’s employees – it is all too easy for a paper check to wind up in the wrong hands.
Furthermore, the safety features that are meant to safeguard paper checks against fraud were created for a different time. Now, a fraudster just needs a company’s banking information in order to duplicate their checks. Paper check security remains virtually as it was in 1865 while digital security technology is constantly advancing. This makes electronic payments a much safer option for all B2B transactions.
American businesses are notably lagging behind their global competitors in the transition from paper checks to electronic payments. A total of 21 billion checks were written in America in 2012 (by businesses and consumers together). That is quadruple the number of checks written in the European Union’s 28 member countries in the same year. Even some developing countries, like Brazil, have embraced electronic payments faster than the United States has.
All statistics agree that electronic payments are less expensive, more efficient, and safer than outdated paper checks. Likewise, global trends indicate that electronic payments are the future for all B2B transactions. American businesses need to wake up to the hidden costs and risks of continuing to use paper checks. Paper checks may be comfortable and familiar, but they are not a match for our modern world. All businesses will benefit by taking their B2B transactions digital.
Secure digital payments are as easy as writing a check. Sign-up today!
The post Paper Checks Cost and the Hidden Risks appeared first on CHERRY.
B2B + Electronic Payments = Trust 15 Nov 2019, 9:55 pm
B2B + Electronic Payments = Trust
By Shtar
Electronic payments have never been more popular or more trusted. American consumers have become accustomed to making automatic monthly payments for their streaming services, sending money to their friends through apps, and even buying clothes from strangers in other countries on the internet.
Paper checks reigned as the original and most dominant non-cash payment instrument for almost 100 years, until credit cards were popularized in the 1950s. Now, advances in electronic payment technology and security have rendered paper checks almost irrelevant. While electronic payments have become the default in C2B (customer to business) payments, 42 percent of B2B (business to business) transactions are still conducted using paper checks. Why are so many businesses hanging on to old-fashioned paper checks in the face of less expensive, more efficient, and safer options?
In their responses to the Association for Finance Professionals’ 2015 Payments Cost Benchmarking Survey, over two-thirds of finance professionals said that they would transition from paper checks to electronic payments if doing so came with a cost-benefit. Alas, there is a clear cost-benefit to moving away from paper checks: Bank of America estimates that every paper check that a business processes costs the business somewhere between $4 and $20. MineralTree Inc. estimates that paper checks together cost American businesses between $26 billion and $54 billion in 2010.
These figures might sound absurdly high to a business that is used to making payments with paper checks. But consider all of the hidden costs that go into making a B2B transaction with a paper check.
In order to make a B2B payment with a paper check, the sending business must first spend money on printers, ink cartridges, envelopes, and postage. Their employees must print the checks, stuff and address envelopes, and mail them. The receiving business’ employees then must take the time to open envelopes, deposit them at the bank, and then follow up on unpaid invoices or bounced checks. Given the volume of checks that some businesses process, these costs can together have a very real effect on a business’ bottom line.
And then there are the potential costs of check fraud. Think about all of those people who come into contact with a check on its way from one business to another: the sending business’ employees, postal workers, the receiving business’ employees, and bank employees. It is all too easy for a paper check to end up in untrustworthy hands. With just a glance at the check at the check in their hands, anyone could see the business’ name, account number, and routing number; all the information that a fraudster needs to access a business’ checking account and use their funds as they please.
Determining the exact number of cases of check fraud in a given year is extremely difficult, as check fraud can take so many different forms. There is forgery (signing a check without authorization), theft (stealing checks), paper hanging (writing checks on closed accounts), and counterfeiting (illegally printing checks with information from the victim’s account). And let’s not forget forget washing (chemically removing information from a check) or paper kiting (writing a check for nonexistent funds, then writing another check with nonexistent funds from a different account to cover the first check).
The exact number of cases of check fraud (and the exact amount of money lost due to check fraud) will remain incalculable, but the National Consumers League believes check fraud to be the number one most common type of scam in America. And with recent advances in mobile banking technology, check fraud is unfortunately still becoming more and more commonplace.
While the previously mentioned forms of check fraud all require obtaining a physical check, mobile banking apps have now enabled fraudsters to commit crimes without a physical check in sight. Now, all a fraudster needs is a picture of a check. From there, they can electronically edit the payee name and amount. Then, they can deposit this doctored check directly into their own account through their banking app.
Furthermore, if a fraudster does acquire a physical copy of someone else’s check, mobile deposits make it even easier to get away with doctoring physical checks. While banking apps do have security measures in place to try to detect edited checks, apps will never be as effective at detecting fraud as human bank tellers. A teller would easily notice when the original payee’s name has been erased with white-out. An app would probably not catch the edit.
It is important to note that forms of mobile check deposit fraud do not just affect those who use mobile banking apps. Rather, everyone who writes checks is at risk. And as mobile deposits grow more common, the problem will only get worse. Mobile deposits are convenient, but they combine brand new technology with old-fashioned paper checks, a piece of technology developed in the 19th century. The safety features that are meant to safeguard paper checks against fraud were not created with the digital era in mind.
All in all, paper checks are not a match with our modern world. Businesses may find paper checks to be comfortable and familiar, but they are rife with hidden costs and security risks. On the other hand, advances in electronic payment technology have enabled all transactions to take place quickly and securely. It is time for all businesses to wake up and embrace electronic payment.
Secure digital payments are as easy as writing a check. Sign-up today!
The post B2B + Electronic Payments = Trust appeared first on CHERRY.
Disadvantage of Paper Checks Antiquated Process 15 Nov 2019, 9:37 pm
Disadvantage of Paper Checks Antiquated Process
By Shtar
It’s Time to Leave Antiquated Paper Checks Behind: How Going Electronic Can Help Your Business and the Disadvantage of Paper Checks.
Electronic payment transactions have become incredibly commonplace.
In any given day, a consumer might buy clothes on the internet, purchase a cup of coffee using an iPhone app, or pay their bills online – or maybe even do all of the above.
Advances in electronic payment technology have enabled all of these transactions to take place quickly and securely. Consumers no longer wonder if their personal credit card information is in jeopardy when they use it to make a purchase online. Likewise, businesses trust electronic payment platforms with their customers’ money as these platforms have been proven to quickly deliver payment to businesses.
Delaying and jeopardizing the safety of these C2B (customer to business) transactions by requiring customers to pay in cash or check would be crazy, right?
Correct. Technology has rendered cash and paper checks unnecessary in C2B payment transactions. Think about where you spend money on a regular basis – few businesses that make frequent direct transactions with consumers are still cash or check only, and virtually none are check only. Businesses have generally accepted that electronic payment is most consumers’ preferred method of payment.
Given the success of electronic payment in C2B transactions, it’s baffling that 42 percent of B2B (business to business) transactions are still conducted using paper checks.
When paper checks started being used for large financial transactions in 1865, they were a hot new piece of technology. Paper checks were the first non-cash instrument to be used for payment. And they remained the dominant non-cash instrument for almost 100 years, until credit cards were popularized in the 1950s.
The world has changed dramatically since 1865, and even since the 1950s. Digitalization and the internet have altered almost everything about how businesses operate. Paper checks have been left behind as a relic of a different time.
Consider the differences between an electronic payment transaction and a paper check payment transaction.
An electronic transaction generally only requires you to swipe your credit card or to enter your credit card’s number, expiration date, and security code. And that is it – in the time it takes you to swipe your card or type up its digits, money has been successfully and securely transferred from your checking account to the business.
A paper check requires you to carefully copy out what and from whom you are buying, what it costs, and when you are buying it. You might be making this transaction with someone who lives elsewhere, in which case you will have to put your check in an envelope, address it, find a stamp to put in the corner, and take it to the post office. The recipient of the check will receive it in the mail, open the envelope, and take it to the bank to be deposited – at which point they will discover that you forgot to sign the back of the check and the whole process will have to be repeated.
Such a process is out of step with our modern world. Furthermore, paper checks are the top subject of fraud today. Anyone who comes across a check sees the sender’s account number, business name, and routing number, which is all the information they need to access their checking account.
Changing payment systems can be logistically difficult. And given how essential paper checks were to the financial world for over one hundred years, it is understandable that businesses are having a hard time seeing the extent to which checks have been holding them back. But by following the path laid by C2B transactions and embracing electronic payment transactions, businesses can make their all of their B2B transactions cheaper, more secure, and more efficient.
Secure digital payments are as easy as writing a check. Sign-up today!
The post Disadvantage of Paper Checks Antiquated Process appeared first on CHERRY.
Digital Fraud: Are Paper Checks the Culprit? 15 Nov 2019, 9:13 pm
Paper Checks and Digital Fraud:
Why Are the Numbers so High?
By Shtar
Have you deposited a check through a mobile banking app? Have you thought it might be an opportunity for digital fraud?
If so, you are one of the 12 million and counting Americans who have used their smartphones to deposit a check. Businesses and consumers nationwide have been charmed by the convenience of using the technology in their pockets to make deposits. Gone are the days of trekking to the bank to deposit a check – now, mobile banking apps can make deposits using just pictures of the front and back of your check.
Unfortunately, this new technology is not just convenient for businesses and consumers. It is also incredibly convenient for fraudsters. Check fraud previously required obtaining a physical copy of someone else’s check by theft of counterfeiting. Now, fraud can be committed without a physical check in sight. To commit digital fraud, all a fraudster needs is a picture of a check. From there, they can electronically edit the payee name and amount. Then, they can deposit this doctored check directly into their own account through their banking app.
Furthermore, if a fraudster does acquire a physical copy of someone else’s check, mobile deposits make it even easier to get away with doctoring physical checks. While banking apps do have security measures in place to try to detect edited checks, apps will never be as effective at detecting fraud as human bank tellers. A teller would easily notice when the original payee’s name has been erased with white-out. An app would probably not catch the edit.
And it is not just intentional check fraud that is putting payers at risk of losing money. Rather, mobile banking apps have opened up another new category of check fraud that is often committed unintentionally.
When you deposit a check at a bank, the teller confiscates it. But when you deposit a check with a banking app, the physical check stays in your possession. Many banks even instruct depositors to hold onto the check for another 30 to 60 days to ensure that the transaction is successful.
This can make it difficult to remember if a check has already been deposited. “Double depositing” is when a payee deposits a check (at least) twice, whether accidentally or intentionally. It has become an unfortunately widespread problem.
Banks typically catch when a check is deposited multiple times through the same channel, like when a payee tries to deposit the same check multiple times through their banking app. But a payee can usually get away with depositing a check through their app, and then again in person at their bank. And there are no measures in place to prevent people from depositing the same check at completely different banks.
When a double deposit occurs, the depositor is credited with twice the amount written on the check and the payer loses twice the amount they had expected. It is then the payer’s responsibility to notice the mistake and contact their bank to correct it. Consumers and businesses typically have a 60 day or so time period in which they can flag such problems. If they fail to notice fraud within that time period, then they are on the hook to pay.
It is important to note that double deposits and other forms of mobile check deposit fraud do not just affect those who use mobile banking apps. Rather, everyone who writes checks is at risk. And as mobile deposits grow more common, the problem will only get worse. Mobile deposits are convenient, but they combine brand new technology with old-fashioned paper checks, a piece of technology developed in the 19th century. Paper checks and mobile apps are a fundamental mismatch, and fraudsters will continue to find ways to exploit this still-developing system.
Secure digital payments are as easy as writing a check. Sign-up today!
The post Digital Fraud: Are Paper Checks the Culprit? appeared first on CHERRY.
What is Success? The Single Metric for Success! 23 Oct 2019, 1:13 am
The Single Metric for Success!
By Shtar
My son and I had a conversation this weekend, during the Shabbat morning meal. “What is success?”
The topic of success came up, and we discussed several different elements of success, and what it means.
- What does success mean today?
- How can success be attained?
- What is (and isn’t) success in real-life?
Firstly, we explored the subject and came to the understanding that success means different things to different people. For his 10½ year old younger brother, who is leaving off to summer camp for the very first time, success is defined as ”getting $20 bucks from Zaidy (grandfather) as extra spending money.”, Success for a teenager is defined quite differently; perhaps getting to take a trip to Europe or Israel, or some other perk, like getting $100 from that same Zaidy, from whom his younger sibling has much lower expectations. But one thing became glaringly obvious as our conversation continued; the awareness that success is a totally different thing to us than it is to someone else. In a sense, success is like a choice product from a toy store: something very different for each person!
After a 20 minute or so lively banter, the folks around the table found that we could all agree on at least a definition of success that was agreeable to us all: that ultimately, success is achieving what one sets themselves out to achieve.
By extension, this definition means that to be successful, the very first metric that will allow you to know if, in fact, that goal is (and, once measurable, to go on to achieve it!) is to have a very clearly defined and measurable destination or goal to get to. If that is missing from the equation- nothing you do will get you closer to achieve anything great
To paraphrase English writer and mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (better known by his pen name, Lewis Caroll):
“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there- immediately!”
And, When the destination or goal you defined is reached or achieved, respecting and honoring the achievement, and the great feeling that such arrival brings along, that is the feeling of success.
The wonderful thing about success is that when you hit your goal, you can continue to ride on the trails it leaves in its wake. Riding on the confidence of one success and one achievement, and leveraging it and your good feeling and self-confidence in having achieved it gives you the desire and thrill to create another milestone and measurable goal.
And when that next, second goal is achieved– you feel (as you truly deserve to feel) that you are a winner! With two achievements behind you, you know and feel that you are capable of achieving even bigger goals and scaling even greater heights. You are simply continuing a pattern of behavior and achievement that is good, hard work, but well worthwhile– and you know you can do it, because you’ve proven it already. Twice, in fact! You are a person who has success followed by more success. Hence the term “successful”. Full of victories, one by one, until you are the embodiment of successes!
And another point worth reflecting upon:
The bigger the odds of achieving the clear and measurable goals you have set for yourself, the stronger the feeling of achievement you will feel, and the sweeter the triumph of success.
To succeed and feel the victories, The need to demand of oneself, with real honest readiness to be bold with your vision and envision goals that, to be frank, scare the living hell out of you. Then and only then, can a goal be set that leaves you with the certainty that you will hustle to achieve it and be a winner- or fall flat and feel like a loser. And we all know that we, entrepreneurs out there to make the world spin just a bit faster or on a slightly different axis, are not losers, are we? Hell no!
Hence, we put ourselves in the necessary mental state of endurance to do what it takes to win and rack up the amazing success that we strive for.
“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” ― Theodore Roosevelt
Thus, success is a very personal feeling as the direct outcome of your personal achievement, against all odds. And, distilled to its essence, for an organization as a whole, the success of an enterprise is actually simple math: The personal achievement of each individual involved, combined for the success of the whole.
And… therefore, dear reader, it’s of extreme importance for your own success in life to clearly define;
- What is your clear and measurable one month goal?
- Three months out? Six? The one year mark?
- For yourself, personally?
- For your business?
For some of you, it may be something private that you’d rather not share. But for the rest of you: be bold! Put your goals out there for the world to see.
Secure digital payments are as easy as writing a check. Sign-up today!
The post What is Success? The Single Metric for Success! appeared first on CHERRY.