The increase in remote working as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic means that access to reliable online security has never been more critical for businesses. In fact, 81% of business owners experienced payments fraud last year, according to a recent survey by J.P. Morgan and the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP). To counter this challenge, banks have been adapting their tech to help protect corporates.

One such example comes from JPMorgan Chase, which has introduced Fraud Protection Services, a digital hub with enhanced fraud prevention tools that is designed to help clients protect their businesses and manage money safely.

The offering is available online to the bank’s small to mid-sized business clients. Businesses can enrol and access Chase’s suite of fraud tools through a dashboard that aims to help the bank's clients take full advantage of security features, including enhanced cheque monitoring and protection, while helping them better manage their cash.

“We want business owners to know we have their back,” said Jennifer Roberts, CEO of Chase Business Banking. “Fraud is a major concern for them and can be devastating for businesses so we felt strongly that these safeguards should be easy to set up and intuitive to use.”

Give us the tools and we will finish the work

New or improved fraud prevention tools in the JPMorgan Chase hub include the following:

• ACH Debit Block: Blocks unauthorised users from withdrawing money out of accounts digitally and automatically.
• Cheque Protection: Provides real-time fraud notifications so businesses can determine if cheques should be paid or returned.
• Cheque Monitoring: Monitors and reviews cheques so users can approve or reject payment.
• Security Enrollment Status: Illustrates potential fraud risk while encouraging users to make their accounts safer.

“It’s our goal to make digital banking easy and safe so that leaders can get the right fraud tools in place and spend more time running their businesses,” said Jennifer Barker, head of Product Delivery at JPMorgan Chase.

Beyond fraud prevention, Chase aims to help businesses increase efficiency so they can easily run their operations and access powerful insights and tools. Digital features include:

• Going paperless by managing accounts online and on mobile.
• Automating manual processes. Companies can bulk upload ACH files to simply collect payments.
• Reporting capabilities, providing access to real time data and insights.
• Additional support by adding administrators to assist or screen share with a Chase rep to troubleshoot.
• Curating content. Offering insights and tips to help corporates to better run their business.

Teaming up with BigTech

Another bank that has recently made moves to enhance fraud prevention measures and digital banking is Australian institution NAB. In yesterday's Industry News post on CTMfile we reported how the bank has launched a cyber bug bounty programme to uncover previously undisclosed vulnerabilities in its systems environment. On top of that, this month the bank has also moved its online business banking platform to the cloud.

Specifically, the bank migrated its NAB Connect platform to Amazon Web Services (AWS). More than 70,000 business customers across Australia use NAB Connect for their online banking requirements. With A$141bn worth of payments processed on NAB Connect in August alone, the bank says that the cloud migration ensures the platform remains resilient and reliable, allowing owners to focus their time on serving customers and running their business.

NAB Executive Enterprise Technology, Steve Day, says AWS service Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) provides secure and scalable compute capacity reducing operational risk and cost, while supporting platform resilience.

“The migration to cloud has already benefited customers from fewer platform interruptions, allowing us to deliver a seamless customer experience through fluctuations in demand. For example, we supported a 42% increase in usage due to EOFY transactions. Our customers are busy running their businesses, and want their online banking experience to be reliable, simple and secure. This migration allows us to develop new services to help our business customers drive operational efficiencies, without disrupting their day-to-day activities.” 

NAB says that the switch to AWS has given it flexible infrastructure that can be modified securely in minutes as opposed to days and weeks. The bank's infrastructure maintenance times have reduced by 60%, giving its engineers more capacity to innovate and test new services to better serve customer needs.”

“We have been working with NAB since 2013 and are pleased to support them as they take another step forward in their cloud transformation journey," said Karl Durrance, director of Enterprise in Australia and New Zealand for AWS. "As technology continues to transform the way Australians bank, we look forward to helping NAB to leverage the flexibility, security, and scalability of AWS to grow their platform and better connect with their customers by delivering seamless, personalised banking solutions.”

Leveraging AWS, the NAB Connect platform will benefit from enhanced fraud detection by using Amazon GuardDuty, a threat detection service that continuously monitors for malicious activity and unauthorised behaviour on NAB’s account and workloads. As well as the introduction of AWS Auto Scaling, which monitors the application and automatically adjusts capacity to maintain steady and predictable performance.

Features of the NAB Connect platform include:

• Multiple account users. Add and manage multiple users and create different authorisation levels with varied levels of capability.
• Uncapped payment transfers. Transfer amounts are only limited by the funds available and the daily payment limits set.
• International payment and foreign exchange services. Book foreign exchange deals and view currency conversion rates before transferring.
• Invoice finance. Sell uncollected invoices to us and we’ll make up to 80% of the eligible invoice value available within one business day.
• Fast payments. Create a unique business PayID and make and receive real-time one-to-one payments.
• Third-party capability. Avoid manual reconciliation by downloading financial files directly to most accounting programmes.