What should you know about payment and invoice fraud?

Sometimes, software alone cannot give you an alert in advance but it needs at least a team of people to strengthen the firewall themselves. Today’s emerging markets are vulnerable towards all the threats. Since Southeast Asia’s economy possesses a significant role in global supply chain, you cannot escape from hovering threat of cyber-attacks.

Being in a business, you need to be aware that you can suffer from attacks when it comes to the likes of dealing with payments and invoices, as well as other forms of data breaches. But, there are ways to stay safe from online fraud and cybercrime.

The popular cyber crimes you need to protect your business

We truly want to believe that the Internet is a safe place where you can’t fall for all types of online scams, but it’s always a good reminder to do a “reality check”. We, humans, can become an easy target for malicious actors who want to steal our most valuable personal data. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),  there are some high-profile methods that can be found in the world such as:

1. Business e-mail compromise (BEC)
2. Data breach
3. Denial of service
4. E-mail account compromise (EAC)
5. Malware
6. Phishing
7. Ransomware

What is invoice fraud?

Invoice fraud happens when fake invoices are generated in attempt to obtain money from companies with vulnerabilities in their accounts payable processes. Fraudsters always target a company based on their size and location to narrow down what suppliers they may use regularly, such as office supplies, cleaning services, etc. With this information, they create phony invoices on behalf of these suppliers that look legitimate except for small discrepancies such as different addresses.

How can businesses avoid invoice fraud?

Make sure that the invoice you receive has a legitimate invoice date, email address, contact information, bank account number, and bank details. It is easy to do a quick google search to ensure whether an invoice is from a genuine supplier or not. If it is a suspicious invoice, run it by your finance team.  Modifications to supplier financial arrangements should be validated against any on-file supplier details. When a supplier invoice has been settled, best practice is to inform them, notifying them which account the payment was made to. The most important person to prevent the fraud is your account and finance team.

How to safely receive payments from customers?

One of the risky areas in business is payment. If you accept payments via your website, make sure you’ve had your website independently-checked with a proper penetration test. This will give you warning on any known vulnerabilities you’re yet to be aware of. If you’re receiving credit card payments, you also have to make sure that the payment gateway that you are using are PCI-Compliant and tokenize the card payment details for your customers. This will further protect card details within the business, so they can’t be used fraudulently.
To discover how Razer Merchant Services can help you expand your payment options and increase sales, schedule a free appointment with our team today.