About positive pay
The Positive Pay feature enables you to make payments and return decisions on suspect check activity within accounts that are enabled for positive pay services. If entitled, you can approve another user's suspect items for payment or return.
The way positive pay works depends on the account. An account may be configured as any of these types:
- Standard – With a standard positive pay account, the system declares an item as suspect when a comparison between the presented records and your issue data indicates the item may be suspect.
- Reverse – With reverse positive pay, you take a more active role, self-monitoring your accounts and notifying the financial institution when a check should be returned. To enable the return and decision process, the system provides a list of all paid items, including checks.
- ACH – ACH positive pay enables you to review and make return decisions on suspect ACH transactions. You can also inquire about historical review items and decisions made on those items.
Standard Positive Pay can have these exception reasons:
- Paid no issue
- Duplicate serial number
- Invalid serial number
- Paid amount differs
- Duplicate paid amount
- Maximum dollar amount exceeded
- Stale date
- Unknown
If entitled, you can submit a decision on a suspect item. Decisions can be submitted on items with a status of Open, In Process, or Pending Approval. Decisions can be changed as long as the status is not Complete, which indicates that the decision has already been transmitted for processing.
Suspect items with Pending Approval status have decisions that must be approved by a second user before they are final. If the status is a link, you can accept or reject the decision.
You can authorize instructions only if you are designated in the system as an approver. You cannot authorize any instructions that you created or last modified.
