Businesses receive many invoices, especially those in the hospitality industry. It can be overwhelming seeing the stack of paper invoices in your back office get higher and higher. Many alcohol deliveries are COD, requiring paper checks to be given to distributors at the time of delivery. This dated payment method is susceptible to multiple security breaches. One way business managers can avoid risk is by utilizing electronic funds transfer (EFT) payments through a vendor like Fintech.
Fintech’s PaymentSource® uses EFT for all your alcohol invoice payments. This provides security for managers through payment automation in accordance with the corresponding regulations and terms. EFT payments give you one less thing to worry about with an added bonus of convenience.
Ditch Paper Checks
Writing a paper check for each COD alcohol delivery is not only time-consuming but vulnerable to human error. For example, you could misplace a check by accident, or the delivery driver you hand it could lose it. There could be an extra zero accidentally added that throws off your margins. It also isn’t too farfetched to think of a scenario where an owner signs blank checks for the manager to doll out to vendors as necessary. This last scenario creates major potential issues if someone gets their hands on a signed blank check.
You can avoid these scenarios altogether by making the switch to EFT. There is no risk of someone losing a paper check or any need to sign blank checks for managers to use when the owner isn’t present to handle an alcohol delivery. EFT payments happen behind the scenes without managers having to worry about a thing.
Electronic Fund Transfer Act
EFT carries some governmental security through the Electronic Fund Transfer Act of 1978. This gives business owners legal recourse in case of any issues with EFT transactions. The Federal Trade Commission notes that “the Act requires financial institutions to adopt certain practices respecting such matters as transaction accounting, and error resolution, requires financial institutions and others to have certain procedures for preauthorized transfers, and sets liability limits for losses caused by unauthorized transfers.” One of the protections under the EFT Act is that managers have up to 60 days to report any unauthorized EFT transactions to their bank.
Keep Your Information Protected
Financial information security is paramount for any business, especially in the modern age of cyberattacks. At Fintech, our payment platform is 100% secure and meets industry standards of SOC 1 certification to keep our client information safe. What is SOC 1? “SOC” stands for Service Organization Control and is a report that verifies whether an organization is following best practices for business transmission. There are multiple versions of SOC reporting, and SOC 1 specifically addresses how an organization handles the transmission and storage of users’ financial statements.
Automate Your Payments, Automate Your Security
Why stress over dealing with paper checks? Why worry about the safety of your online transactions? You can run your business without these worries by paying your alcohol invoices with PaymentSource. With PaymentSource, businesses can streamline their payments while taking advantage of data insights and automated line-item data integration into their back-office system. Learn more about PaymentSource here.
