To combat check fraud, the Banque de France is asking banks to favor handing over checkbooks in branches, rather than sending them by post.
How to reduce check fraud? The Banque de France has been working on the subject for years. The phenomenon, in fact, has taken worrying proportions in recent years. The check, only 3.4% of transactions in 2022 excluding cash, accounted for a third of the nearly 600 million euros embezzled. A figure obviously without equivalent among other means of payment.
In August 2021, however, the Payment Means Security Observatory of the Banque de France listed a series of measures put in place by banks to bring this figure into more acceptable proportions. Non-binding measures, however, relying solely on their good will.
Here’s what your bank should do to prevent check theft
What is the outcome, 2 and a half years later? Banks have implemented a number of new measures. Among them, the improvement of behavioral analyses, which make it possible to identify unusual operations, or the delay of collections, which complicate the lives of fraudsters. Others, however, remain generalized, if not implemented. Among them, the limitation of sending checks by mail.
Registered shipping too expensive
Today, the main vector of fraud is the loss and theft of checks, explained Vronique Burgaj, in charge of monitoring the security of means of payment at the Banque de France, on a daily basis. The echoes. However, these thefts often occur during postal delivery, in mailboxes or even in sorting rooms. The solution is however simple: We ask that the customer can pick up your checkbook at an agency and for freeinstead of receiving your checkbook by mail, announces Vronique Burgaj.
The other solution, for people who cannot travel to an agency, would consist of generalize registered mail, with delivery in person. Problem: this shipment costs too much. Only two online banks, BoursoBank and Fortuneo, offer this service. Some only charge the cost of shipping, currently around 6 euros. But most charge for it: 7.44 euros on average, to which are sometimes added shipping costs.
Sending a checkbook home: what does it cost?