Is Your Stimulus Payment Protected?

Over 4 million stimulus, also know as, Economic Impact Payment (EIP) have been made by the IRS, through MetaBank, N.A. using prepaid debit cards. It appears that as a security feature, to avoid theft of the stimulus payment mail in transit, the cards were placed in plain envelopes, with the return address “Money Network Cardholder Services” from MetaBank in Omaha. If you are junk mail adverse like me, that packaging is a prime candidate for the shredder without being opened.

The unintended consequence of the nondescript security feature may have caused many to throw away much need funds. Had the envelopes featured an official government logo, it may have been easy targets for mailbox divers.

Persons who opened the nondescript mail would have found instructions on how to activate the card. If the card activation instructions were misplaced, and a general search of the internet was done to find activation instructions, that could be a problem. Wherever there is money, there are scammers. Scammers have been known to set up websites to collect the card numbers and other personal information through fake customer service centers. Once they have your information, your stimulus funds are gone. Whether it is the stimulus prepaid debit cards, or other debit and credit cards, there is technology to help detect and prevent fraud. 

Modern counter fraud technology involves the use of cognitive techniques to analyze the validity of transactions with higher accuracy. Often when one path is closed to criminals a new path is explored. In the past, it would take weeks or months to develop new fraud detection models. However, with cognitive technology, new models can be developed and deployed as soon as the fraud is identified. Additionally, counter fraud technology with Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities, can help you find fraud patterns that were not noticed by human eyes. In this regard, the system would suggest better ways to identify fraud.

IBM Counter Fraud solution, Safer Payments can identify more instances of fraud while reducing false positives. The result of deploying this technology dramatically improves accuracy and efficiency of counter fraud analyst. How old is your Bank’s counter fraud technology? Let us chat to see if Safer Payments is the right solution for your institution. 

#?H???????S?S