Half of Companies Say Digital Processes Reduce Fraud

A majority of companies across all size ranges report that they have benefited from digitizing payments processes. 

Among the many benefits of digitizing payments processes they report is fraud reduction. In fact, 50% of chief financial officers (CFOs) say digitization benefited that part of their payments operations, according to “Business Payments Digitization,” a PYMNTS and Corcentric collaboration based on a survey of 400 CFOs from middle-market firms with $400 million to $2 billion in annual revenue. 

Get the report: Business Payments Digitization 

The larger the company, the more likely it is to say that digitization has lowered fraud. Among the firms with that view are 67% of the largest companies surveyed in the survey, 48% of midsize companies, 44% of small companies and 42% of the smallest companies. 

PYMNTS also found that CFOs from the largest companies are most likely to believe that fraud reduction is important to creating healthy balance sheets. In fact, 36% of them cite fraud reduction as a “very” or “extremely” important factor in creating a healthy balance sheet, compared to an average of 28% for all companies. 

Installing New Systems 

Overall, 59% of companies installed new fraud detection systems as they digitized payments operations. The largest companies led the way, with 75% installing fraud detection. 

PYMNTS also found that 59% of midsize companies, 50% of small ones and 51% of the smallest ones installed systems to detect fraudulent payments as they digitized payments. 

The most common types of fraud detection systems installed by companies that made these investments are data mining and deep learning or neural networks, installed by 68% and 59% respectively. 

Other types of systems that were installed include artificial intelligence (AI), rules-based algorithms, case-based reasoning and fuzzy logic. These were installed by 40%, 38%, 29% and 27%, respectively, of the firms. 

Establishing Payments Infrastructures 

The decision to digitize payments during the past two years has positioned many companies to profit from the pandemic-influenced economy. 

As businesses exit pandemic survival mode and think about what’s next, business-to-business (B2B) payments are increasingly ripe for an overhaul, Manish Jaiswal, chief product officer of Corcentric, told PYMNTS in a June 2 interview. 

Read more: AI-Powered Invoicing Key to Keeping Suppliers Happy — and Paid 

Companies across all verticals and of all sizes are re-examining their spend management — especially invoicing — with an eye toward solutions that can make everyone a bit more efficient, Jaiswal said. 

“It’s a prime time to get in and get some automation done,” Jaiswal said.