Are you proficient in recognizing phone scams? One that I've frequently experienced is when the caller tells me I've won a cruise and all I have to do is pay the taxes. To help combat phone fraud, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) amended the Telemarketing Sales Rule. Part of the amendment prohibits payment types commonly used in deceptive and abusive telemarketing practices. Effective June 13, 2016, telemarketers can't ask for payment by cash-to-cash money transfers, PINs from cash reload cards, or bank account information, which would allow them to create a remotely created check (RCC). Fraudsters prefer RCCs because reversals are more difficult, notes the FTC. In particular, RCCs sail quickly through the clearing and settlement process making for easy collection by fraudsters and clunky adjustment processes for financial institutions.
Financial institutions (FIs) are the gatekeepers to payment systems and, with the amendment to the rule, have a new risk for what their customers do. FIs have always had the compliance risk of understanding their customer's business. As an FI, how would you know if you had a telemarketing customer already on board or one attempting to apply today? Further, how would you know if a current customer is accepting payment via RCC, since RCCs look like traditional checks? If you have third-party processors as customers, these questions become more difficult. Then, the risk is to identify if your customer's customer is a telemarketer processing banned payments through your bank.
Most agreements between FIs and business customers typically include a clause binding their customers to process payments in compliance with applicable laws of the United States. What additional steps should FIs take to manage the risks that apply to different industries and different payment types?
There are limited ways to identify RCCs because such items are cleared like traditional checks. Effective November 2015, the standards for the MICR (magnetic ink character recognition) line were changed to include a "6" in a certain position in the line to indicate an RCC. This is a standard and not a requirement. But if the 6 is used, that is one way to identify an RCC. If the standard is not used, nothing uniquely identifies an item as an RCC unless one examines the signature block on the check, since RCCs have no signature. An FI or a processor may not have the ability to look at every item included in every deposit, but could have random testing in place to attempt to identify the illegal use of RCCs.
Another indicator of deceptive practices by a business customer is anomalies in return rates. A large number of adjustments may signal that abuses are taking place. An RCC is often confused with an ACH entry and some telemarketers may convert their RCCs to ACH to spread out alarming return rates.
It will be all hands on deck to stop abusive RCC practices, but the FTC has charted the course with its new rulemaking.
By Jessica J. Trundley, AAP, payments risk expert in the Retail Payments Risk Forum at the Atlanta Fed