How To Spot Suspicious Activity or Transactions In Your Business

Running a business involves a lot of potential hazards and risks that you need to manage on a daily basis. While most of these risks may never happen, being aware of their existence and what to do about them helps to protect your company and its employees. One area that can be targeted is payments in and out of the company. This can be difficult to spot unless you know what to look for. Let’s look at how to spot suspicious activity or transactions in your business.

Use Software to Help You

Some companies use software to help them identify any activity on their accounts that might be suspicious. Software such as Xelix monitors your finances in real time and flags any activity that is considered to be suspicious.

This is a great way to keep tabs on your finances without having to manually check at regular intervals or monitor every transaction. However, it is still a good idea to regularly check the transactions to double-check just in case.

Unusual Transactions

One of the ways that you can spot suspicious activity is by the transactions that are made. Often these will be out of the normal pattern for a customer which will hopefully make them stand out. Some of these activities include:

• Abnormally large transactions
• Cash payments when this has not normally been the norm
• Offshore accounts in countries where illegal activity is present
• Using multiple currencies in one transaction
• Customers are reluctant to provide personal information or the information is false

Trying to identify these transactions isn’t always easy, but with diligence and the correct training, you and your staff can spot these activities.

How to Identify Suspicious Transactions

Identifying suspicious transactions can be tricky, however, there are procedures that can be put in place to help with this process.

• e-Commerce payments are quickly becoming a new way to commit these transactions. Using specially designed monitoring software can pick up these activities before they go too far. There also needs to be a strong verification process in place.
• Structuring involves many people depositing small amounts of money across multiple companies so that no suspicious reporting is triggered. This can be a tricky practice to spot, but, there are often patterns that can be picked up that will show the process.
• The Reverse Flip method involves people buying expensive items such as houses for less than the value and then selling them on. The house is paid for partly in clean money and partly in dirty money. If you see an expensive item being bought for a reduced price, then this could be a concern.
• E-Cash is a way of using anonymous prepaid payment cards as a way of transporting cash. This often means large sums being transported in this way.

Final Thoughts

It can be hard for companies to spot and deal with these types of fraudulent transactions. With the right training and tools, you and your business can identify these transactions and stop them before they cause any problems – plus, have collated all the evidence you need to report it to the relevant authorities.