Introduction to Positive Pay

What is Positive Pay?

Positive Pay is an automated detection tool that protects your business against altered, forged, and counterfeit checks and electronic payments. The system compares the inclearing transactions against what has been entered as “authorized” in the case of a check or "allowed" in the case of an ACH.

Once transactions are posted to a company’s account, exceptions might be generated. The goal is to minimize the amount of exceptions needing decisioning, but sometimes manual intervention is necessary. If these exceptions appear, the user will need to log into either the BeB interface via a computer or the business mobile application to view and decide whether the transactions should be paid or declined.

Within the BeB Online interface, users can enter expected transactions (or "issues"). As part of the BeB approval capabilities, certain users can be entitled to enter issues, but other users will have to approve them. While issues cannot be entered via Mobile Banking Positive Pay, users can decision and approve via the mobile banking app.

We also automatically enable Payee Positive Pay as an extra layer of security, as it aims to prevent fraud by cross-referencing payee name form a company check issue file with those on record at ConnectOne Bank. Any discrepancies result will generate as a Payee Mismatch exception reason.

Payee Name Verification Requirements

! The guidelines outlined below must be followed to obtain the highest level of performance from our Payee Name Verification (PNV) solution. Failure to adhere to them can result in a disruption of service.

^{CHECK STOCK}

^{Follow ANSI standards for business checks with 24lb MICR bond. Any artwork, logo or design on the check that could hinder capturing a high-quality image, should not be utilized, particularly if the design may interfere with a successful reading of the payee name information on the image. If artwork is translucent or opaque and does not hinder capturing a quality image, it should be acceptable for payee name processing.}

^INK

^{Only use black ink.}

^PRINTERS

^{Use only PostScript printers such as laser printers or other digital printers.}
^{Avoid using dot matrix printers.}

^FONT

^{Arial has high read rates and is preferred. Other acceptable fonts: Times New Roman, Courier, Verdana, Univers, Tahoma, Albertus, Batang, Bookman, and Zurich.}
^{PostScript printers (DPT units) should use size 10 fonts. If measured by pixels at a resolution of 200 dpi, size 14 should be selected.}

^{HANDWRITTEN ITEMS}

^{Handwritten items are not supported.}

^FORMATTING

^{The file upload must read exactly as the check is issued.}
^{Avoid extra spaces, underlining, italicizing, or bold face fonts.}
^{Limit punctuation. For example: UNITED WE STAND is preferred to UNITED-WE-STAND!}
^{All upper-case is recommended.}
^{Verify visually that the characters do not touch each other.}
^{Recommended date format: MM/DD/YY}

^{FONT PITCH}

^·^{Provide sufficient spacing between each letter in the name so they can be clearly read. For example, LIVE could be misread as UVE if the letters are spaced improperly.}

^{· It is recommended that most printers use pitch proportionate to the font, however, in situations in which pitch is fixed, the vendor has suggested a pitch size of 10 pt. After printing, there should be about 10 characters per inch.}

^CHARACTERS

^{Standard and acceptable characters for payee names:}

^{· ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ}

^{· abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz}

^{· 0123456789}

^{· , . : ; / & # @ ( ) ‘ — +}

^{Do not use unacceptable special characters or asterisks. Special characters are not typically contained in legitimate payees and can result in higher exception rates.}

^{PAYEE NAME}

^{Line 1 cannot exceed 128 characters.}
^{Line 2 cannot exceed 128 characters.}
^{UPPERCASE letters are recommended.}
^{Can be on more than one line.}

^{PAYEE INFORMATION PLACEMENT}

^{Should be listed near (to the right or just below) PAY TO THE ORDER OF}
^{Horizontally, the payee should not extend past the middle of the check.}
^{·Vertically, the payee name should be located just below the vertical midpoint of the check but should not extend to the bottom 1/4 of check or interfere in any way with the MICR line information contained at the bottom of the check.}
^{Should be displayed in a clear area, free of and not touching other text, lines, or stamp marks.}