ProfitStars, a Jack Henry & Associates company, partnered with ACH Alert to offer two new security solutions, ACH C.O.P.S., and ACH A.L.E.R.T., to financial institutions using its ACH Client and Enterprise Payment Solutions platform.

ACH C.O.P.S. provides fraud detection to outbound ACH credit and wire entries by requiring transaction-level validation after transactions are received by the financial institution and prior to them being released to the respective payment network. In line with FFIEC's supplemental guidance to its Authentication in an Internet Banking Environment, ACH C.O.P.S. provides out-of-band authentication for ACH credit and wire transfers by requiring customer approval of all suspect ACH and wire transactions prior to transmission, preventing money from going to an account that is not preapproved by the originator.

To mitigate losses from the posting of unauthorized ACH debits, ACH A.L.E.R.T. offers ProfitStars clients actionable, real-time control over ACH debit approvals. Financial institutions can allow customers to determine their own debit notification parameters, notification method, and contact information as well as automate the return and recredit process. Since corporate customers have only 24 hours to react to unauthorized debits, ACH A.L.E.R.T. provides protection above legacy debit filters and without the setup and maintenance costs.

CapitalMark Bank & Trust is an existing ACH Alert client that prevented more than $500,000 in fraud losses during the first quarter of 2012 alone. The Tennessee-based de novo with $700 million in assets focuses on remotely serving area SMBs. Barry Rich, the institution's chief financial officer, says, "ACH and wire fraud have become increasingly targeted at community banks and more widespread with the growing sophistication of attacks. ProfitStars' partnership with ACH Alert sets a new standard for anomaly detection in processing ACH and wire transactions."

The FBI reported last September it was investigating more than 400 reported cases of corporate account takeover initiated by unauthorized ACH and wire transfers from U.S. business bank accounts, resulting in the attempted theft of more than $255 million. The availability of ACH C.O.P.S. and ACH A.L.E.R.T. enables financial institutions using ProfitStars' ACH Client and EPS platform to deputize companies and only resolve exceptions rather than using algorithms to speculate on potentially suspect activity and over great spans of data.

 

 

[This article was posted on April 17, 2012, on the website of ABA Banking Journal, www.ababj.com.]

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