Which fraud protection tools do your peers trust most?

The stats are daunting: 71% of companies were hit by payment fraud last year.

Of course you’d like to hope your company is in the 29% that escapes fraud-free. But you probably still want to prepare as if your company is under siege.

The good news? There’s no shortage of protections out there to keep your company’s cash safer, whether you pay by check, Automated Clearing House (ACH), wire transfer, credit or purchasing card, etc.

The Association of Financial Professionals (AFP) recently surveyed your peers on their experiences with payment fraud, as well as what they’re doing to prevent it.

We’ve scoured the survey results and tallied the top payment protectors out there being used every day to keep payments safe.

What’s your score?

Granted, your company isn’t going to be using everything on this list.  But the more of these protections you do tap, the more confident you can be your organization will be significantly less vulnerable to a costly hit.

More than three quarters of your peers are using these:

Positive pay/Reverse positive pay (84%)

Daily reconciliation of bank accounts and other internal services (78%)

ACH debit blocks (76%)

Separate accounts to segregate disbursements from collections (75%)

More than half of your peers turn to these to protect their cash:

ACH debit filters (61%)

Payee positive pay (58%)

Less than half of organizations are turning to these to keep them safe:

Separate accounts by payment type (e.g., to segregate vendor, tax, payroll, dividend) (47%)

“Post no checks” restriction on depository accounts (42%)

Separate account for wire transfers (36%)

At least 1 in 4 organizations use these fraud safeguards:

Separate accounts for receiving ACH debit payments (32%)

ACH positive pay (27%)

Separate account for card payments (24%)

Less than 10% tap these:

Non-bank fraud control services (9%)

Universal Payment Identification Code for ACH credits( 7%)

The real cost of coming up short

As for the fraud protections your company isn’t currently using?

Chances are it’s been determined the cost doesn’t justify the benefit. That’s the no. 1 reason your peers give for not doing more on this front.

You’ll want to pass this along: Seeing as the average cost per incident of payment fraud is now $18,400, it’s a potentially expensive gamble you don’t want to take.