Strategies and Tools for Combating Mobile Check Deposit Fraud in 2025
- Payments fraud continues to be a growing problem
- Smaller financial institutions face bigger challenges
- Practical fraud prevention measures are available for small banks and credit unions
Our friends at Advanced Fraud Solutions kicked off the new year with recommended strategies for credit unions and community banks to combat mobile check deposit fraud in 2025.
The article notes that payments fraud continues to surge, with 80% of organizations reporting fraud attempts or successful breaches, up from 65% in 2022.
The dominant form? Check fraud, affecting 65% of respondents.
Strategies for Financial Institutions
For smaller financial institutions, combating mobile check deposit fraud is especially challenging. However, each strategy below can be utilized by FIs of all sizes for check fraud detection:
Account Activity: Know Your Customer (KYC) and Transaction Monitoring – Review deposit consistency, flag new accounts with sudden spikes in activity, and watch for returning check patterns.
Transaction Types: Monitoring for Unusual or Sparse Activity – Look for accounts with minimal day-to-day transactions but large deposits followed by quick withdrawals, as well as cross-channel fraud.
Balancing Convenience with Security: Delaying Fund Availability – Implement delayed fund availability, especially for new accounts or unusually large deposits, to allow time to investigate potential fraud.
Strategies for Financial Institutions
The post also recommends practical fraud prevention measures specifically for small banks and credit unions, such as:
- Leverage Consortium-Based Solutions
- Enhanced Employee Training
- Implement Layered Review Processes for High-Risk Transactions
Emphasis is on a proactive, multi-faceted approach to combating mobile check deposit fraud, leveraging personalized customer relationships, diligent transaction monitoring, and practical fraud detection tools.
Furthermore, FIs should be deploying other technologies to validate check payments, along with analyzing the images of deposited items to previous cleared items. This adds additional layers of check fraud detection.