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CHECK FRAUD
Signatures can be verified at any point, from initial presentment to back-office clearing.
THE USUAL METHOD of authenticating the signature on a check, if done at all, involves a cursory comparison of the signature with a signature card at the branch. This poses little or no threat to forgers. Further, the industry's move to check imaging largely has neutered many of the security features that have been added to checks over the past decades, observes Scott Hansen, vice president of business development and strategic marketing at Lake Mary, Fla.-based Harland Financial Solutions (HFS).
Sensing a market opportunity, HFS has introduced a line of checks that can only be signed by the person (or persons) to whom it was issued. Using a technology dubbed "Validify," each check is pre-printed with a visible "signature code" generated using samples of the customer's signature. Then, a reader device can determine whether the signature on the check matches the one that generated the code.
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When it's increasingly likely that a...