Positive Pay

You send the bank your checks-issued information electronically online or via magnetic tape, cartridge, or floppy disk. When checks are presented for payment, the Online Positive Pay system attempts to match each item presented with each item you issued. Checks that don't match (exception items) are reported to you

As implemented by BofA and the file formats required

Reverse Positive Pay

Reverse positive pay is similar to positive pay, but the process is reversed, with the company, not the bank, maintaining the list of checks issued. When checks are presented for payment and clear through the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Reserve prepares a file of the checks' account numbers, serial numbers, and dollar amounts and sends the file to the bank.

In reverse positive pay, the bank sends that file to the company, where the company compares the information to its internal records. The company lets the bank know which checks match its internal information, and the bank pays those items.  {what if SBE could read that file format and match it to the register of checks it knows it wrote?}

The bank then researches the checks that do not match, corrects any misreads or encoding errors, and determines if any items are fraudulent. The bank pays only "true" exceptions, that is, those that can be reconciled with the company's files.

See also:

• http://www.positivepay.net

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