With Bulloch County’s population expected to exceed 100,000 residents by 2030, Morris Bank is ready to provide secure, efficient and hassle-free banking services as more people and businesses come into the community.
“At Morris Bank, we pride ourselves on being a community bank and we are looking forward to getting the opportunity to meet newcomers and new business owners,” said Stephanie Moody, the bank’s Treasury Management Specialist for the Bulloch County area. “We are anxious to learn all we can about their business models, so that we can find ways to help them to be more efficient, to be safer and to bring their business to the next level.”
And while Moody and her colleagues at Morris are planning for what the future may bring, they are excited about offering banking services right now that will help local businesses of all sizes be more successful.
“We love to meet with businesses – new and established ones – so we can create a plan with the best solutions we have to offer,” Moody said. “The most popular service we offer as part of Treasury services is our ACH origination, which allows any business customer to create electronic payments and deposits.”
As a provider of Treasury Services, Moody and Morris Bank work with a company’s payroll service or a small businesses’ payroll clerk to set up direct deposit into an employee’s account. Direct deposit gets employees paid more quickly and more securely.
“Most business need to pay their employees, so we can help with payroll services and with check fraud on the rise, direct payments are a great solution to reduce that risk significantly and we are honored to help businesses with those different services,” Moody said.
Moody said Morris Bank also offers remote deposit capture, which lets clients make deposits easily and securely without physically coming to the bank.
For a small number of checks, a photo of the check can be easily deposited, Moody said. For customers with large numbers of checks to deposit, as part of their service, Morris provides a scanner for a fee that quickly sends checks directly into a customer’s account.
Also, Moody said the bank recommends its “Positive Pay” service to business customers.
“That service optimizes safety against fraud, especially for clients that issue a lot of checks,” she said. “The service allows clients to easily monitor their transactions and checks themselves. They can see immediately if there are exceptions in their account that they did not issue or for a different amount than was issued.
“If a customer sent out an invoice with a check and it presents to the bank with a different amount, or a different check or invoice number, our system would automatically flag that for them and the customer would tell us to pay it or to return it.”
Unfortunately, Moody and John Durrence, Morris Bank’s information security officer, are seeing a rise in check fraud.
“With technology today, anyone can go buy a $200 color printer, buy some check stock online and print fake checks all day long for a very low cost,” Durrence said. “Technology is cheaper than ever and better than ever and allows people to easily get their hands on it. Even fake watermarks are part of check stock people can get, so it’s become easier, unfortunately, to commit check fraud.”
Moody said with mobile banking the way it is now, “you can take a picture of a check and that has become a high-target item for fraudsters who are looking for any way to take advantage.”
Which is why Durrence believes the Treasury Services Moody and her team can help businesses set up are essential.
“To issue manual checks can lead to higher fraud, plus you have to buy the checks and either hand write or print the checks and keep them locked up,” he said. “You get away from most of that fraud possibility with direct deposit and ACH services.”
Durrence has some simple advice for individuals and businesses to avoid fraud and catch it as soon as fraud occurs.
“Everyone needs to be cautious,” he said. “It may sound obvious, but make sure the bank has a valid email address and a cell number. So many of these fraud alerts on an account are sent out via text or email and if we don’t have that proper information, it makes it hard to get in touch with customers.”
Also, “people need to know that a bank – us – will never call a customer directly and ask for a PIN or a password. That’s a trick that the fraudsters try to do to gain that information to try to gain access to online accounts that way.”
And Moody and Durrence want to work with all business owners to craft a plan that make the direct deposit, electronic payments and fraud protection services Morris Bank provides available to them.
“We want people and businesses to understand that the services are not cost prohibitive and not too complex for large businesses or a mom and pop businesses,” Moody said. “It is safer and more convenient for businesses of any size. We have some clients that only have one or two employees and they still use direct deposit.
“We listen to business owners to understand what their model is of payments and deposits and give them the tools to take their business to a higher level as hassle-free and safe as possible.”