WHAT EVERY BUSINESS NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT PAYMENTS FRAUD

As the owner of a small business, Joan wears many hats – from innovator to publicist to accountant. To bring her vision to life, she regularly collaborates with a network of vendors, with email often serving as the primary channel for communications. So, when Joan received a call from a longtime vendor about a missed payment for a recent order – a sizable payment Joan was certain she had paid several weeks earlier – her heart sank.After cross-checking her bank statement with email correspondence to confirm she had remitted payment, Joan and the vendor arrived at the awful realization that a fraudster, posing as the vendor, had stealthily intercepted previous email correspondence between the vendor and Joan before sending Joan an invoice with new wiring instructions, which she dutifully followed.In this case, Joan’s story is fictional, but her situation is not. Instances of fraud – and business email compromise, specifically – are playing out with increasing frequency.As businesses of all types continue to innovate for scale and efficiency, fraudsters are fast-tracking their own capabilities with elevated sophistication and impact. Small businesses remain particularly vulnerable to fraud due to the likelihood of having fewer fraud prevention restrictions, controls and processes in...