Check Debuts Fraud Protection Tools for Payroll Companies

Embedded payroll company Check has introduced several tools to help companies scale payroll businesses.

The tools, announced Monday (Dec. 4), include credit and fraud protection, embedded setup, and embedded support and are designed to help platforms address issues like fraud management and detection, data migration, compliance and support.

“Something as complex as payroll requires a tremendous amount of time and resources to properly design and execute — you can give businesses the technical components to build it, but you can’t just send them out to sea to run it,” Check Co-founder and CEO Andrew Brown said in a news release.

“With our new suite of offerings, we’ve identified the most complicated aspects of launching and operating a payroll business and eliminated them. Through this, we’re able to provide more than just embedded tech; we’re providing a fully embeddable business line with better unit economics and markedly less risk.”

The release notes payroll fraud is one of the most prevalent varieties of fraud, and twice as likely to strike smaller and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) than large companies.

And research from PYMNTS Intelligence has shown that a number of smaller businesses look for fraud prevention capabilities when seeking payment processors.

“This enhanced tool also includes fraud monitoring and prevention services, encompassing suspicious activity reporting, enhanced due diligence and watchlist screening,” Check said. “Platforms remain completely out of the flow of funds without needing to build their own credit, fraud, compliance and regulatory teams.”

Meanwhile, PYMNTS explored the appeal of embedded finance last week in a conversation with Luke Latham, general manager of Australia and New Zealand at Airwallex, and Tom Randklev, global head of product at CellPoint Digital.

As that report notes, embedded finance is attractive to businesses as it sits at the conjuncture of the world’s ongoing digitization and the behavioral expectations of end users.

“Any financial product or service that has traditionally involved a departure from the user experience, or an additional set of activities, is there for the taking,” said Latham.

“There is a lot of success in the SMB market using [embedded finance] to satisfy their customers and present this as an innovation,” added Randklev. “The whole ecosystem is inherently managed, which creates efficiencies and a delightful customer experience.”

“The end user believes [payments are] an expected part of their user experience, and that is the mindset that platforms are needing to respond to,” Latham said. “It’s an opportunity to improve customer acquisition, reduce customer acquisition costs and improve retention.”