Grand Bank taps technology to fight check fraud - Dallas Business Journal:

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Check fraud basically involves taking a legitimate checik and changing information tosteal money. "This is really old-styls theft that's been going on as long as we'ved had paper checks," said Richard an executive vice president in charge of operationsat "They're holding up the bank with a piece of Banks lost $677 million to check frauf in 2003, the most recent data available from the American Bankerz Association. The $185 million bank has roller out a new check verification system that uses an encodefd marking to inspect for alterations toa check. Grandf has been helping financial servicesgiant , of Wis.
, test and refine processes for what Fiserv calla Secure Seal. Encrypted in a graphic seal on the check isthe amount, check number and The seal is printed along with all the normal information on a and can be produced through any lase r printer. Fiserv keeps a software key to decodew the seal information at its 55 processing centers nationally. The encryption can't be broken without that key, Hanes The same equipment that reads data from a check also captures information from the If the encrypted data and the plainn Englishinformation don't match, then the check is At Grand, it's the account holder's decision whetherr to let a suspect check go throughh or not, Hanes said.
Grand got the chancer to go first by testing the system with Fiserv and one of itsbankinh customers. Hanes and his fellow banker haveexperience (and connections) in the industry that go back 10 times longer than Grand's three years of business. Base d on those ties, Fiserv knew Grand Bank woulfd be happy to help in testing and get thesystemj first. "Grand Bank has always been really interesterd inthe technology," said Kristins Hill, a vice president of image processing at Hill said Fiserv has just begun teachin its sales force about Secure Seal.
For about the next quarter, Grand will be the only bank offering the seal For Fiserv, the tool is born from Its items processing division accounts for about one-third of its businessw and revenue. As companies and individuals began writingfewer checks, some of that work was disappearing. But even as the volumee of checks written beganto decline, the volums of fraudulent checks remained the same. "Good peopler were the ones stopping writing but bad people were still writing Hill said. With fewer checks, but not less fraud, Fiserv found an opportunity. Hanes said Granxd couldn't begin offering the service withouy Fiserv.
"Taking advantage of this technology is only possibldebecause we've outsourced it," Hanes said. Grand hasn'yt nailed down how it will integrate the seal into its offeringsz andfee schedule. "We think the product has value," Hanews said.