Wells Fargo Improves Fraud Protection in Business-to-Business Electronic Payments

Wells Fargo & Company — the only organization ever to win two consecutive ACH Quality Awards from NACHA — The Electronic Payments Association — today announced the launch of the Perfect Receivables(SM) service to streamline and increase the security of business-to-business electronic payments. The new Treasury Management solution is available for both ACH debits and credits, offering fraud risk reduction on both. Wire transfers will be integrated into the service in the near future.

“We’re listening to our customers and delivering what they need,” said Keith Theisen, senior vice president in Wells Fargo’s Wholesale Services Group. “Our customers’ need to accept electronic payments has grown exponentially as their customers more frequently request to make payments electronically. The Perfect Receivables service is easy to implement, and helps them overcome the obstacles to receiving payments electronically.”

The service assigns a range of unique payment identification codes to bank customers’ accounts. Companies provide each of their trading partners with a unique Wells Fargo payment identification code for use when sending payments. Trading partners use these codes rather than actual account numbers to route their payments, so companies’ bank account numbers are not disclosed and, thus, are protected from fraudulent transactions.

The Perfect Receivables service identifies the incoming payments based on the Wells Fargo payment identification codes, credits them to a single Wells Fargo account, and provides a consolidated settlement to speed account reconciliation. Because each incoming payment carries the unique Wells Fargo payment identification code for that trading partner, the payments can be posted automatically to the correct account on the customer’s receivables system to achieve straight-through processing.