The end-of-year holidays remain a high time for using checks, the means of payment most exposed to fraud. Here are five tips to avoid unpleasant surprises.
With the start of school, the end-of-year holidays are the time of year when individuals sign the most checks. Even in decline, the latter is still widely used for New Years, but also to send a donation to a charity, rent an apartment for the holidays, buy or resell gifts on peer-to-peer sales sites, etc.
Be careful, however: the check is the most fragile means of payment in the face of fraudand in fact the one that generates the most fraudulent debits: alone, a third of the sums embezzled in 2022, or nearly 400 million euros (1).
A few days before Christmas and New Year, reminder of good practices to implement to protect against fraud.
1 – Fill out your checks carefully
To prevent a check issued by you from being falsified, fill it carefully, black inktaking care complete all mandatory informationusing horizontal lines to leave no free space on the order or amount and of course avoiding erasures.
If you send this check by post, remember to notify the recipient and ask them to acknowledge receipt when they receive it. If this is not the case within a reasonable period of time, immediately object to your bank.
2 – Protect your checkbooks
Most check fraud follows thetheft of checkseither during their transport from your bank to your home, or the occasion of burglaries.
To avoid this scenario, a few reflexes should be adopted:
- limit the stock of checks you have at home to a minimum;
- protect them from burglaries;
- If possible, avoid having your checkbooks sent to you by La Poste, prefer to collect them from an agency. Otherwise, opt for registered delivery;
- If your checkbook takes too long to arrive, do not hesitate to object.
3 – Be careful when accepting a check
Did you receive a check for Christmas? Start by not delaying too much before cashing it: A check lying around is an unnecessary risk of loss and theft, reminds the Bank of France.
Do you accept a check for a sale between individuals or an apartment rental? Make sure that all the mandatory information appears, that it is consistent, and endorse the check immediately.
Do not cash it if it does not correspond to what was agreed, especially if the amount is higher than expected. You would then risk having to repay part of the amount. This is a classic fraudulent check cashing scam scenario.
4 – Never cash a check on behalf of someone else!
This is undoubtedly the main source of check fraud: the fraudulent remittance scam. To protect yourself from this, there is a simple and effective solution: never agree to cash a check on behalf of another person, even if you are promised easy money or called ugly.
5 – Choose other payment methods
As we will have understood, the check is particularly susceptible to fraud. This is due, in particular:
- that it is easy to spoof, in the absence of strong authentication;
- that its payment is not guaranteed and that it may return unpaid, even several days after being credited.
Where possible, opt for more robust payment methods, such as credit cards, transfers and e-wallets for remote purchases, or cash for live transactions.
(1) Source: Banque de France