| Although document security features have been steadily improving over the past few decades, there is still a high incidence of cheque fraud around the world. In the past, cheque printers added features such as pantographs and watermarks to make outright forgery more difficult. However, today one of the largest issues in cheque fraud is the “washing” or altering of legitimate cheques and other payment instruments.
The leading method being adopted around the world to detect these alterations is the use of ultraviolet (UV) ink, which is not visible to the unaided human eye. All but the most experienced fraudsters will have no idea that this ink, which is printed on top of the visible features, is also being altered when the cheque information is being changed or the check data is ‘washed’. Digital Check is a leader in UV detection with our TS240 scanner offering the option of UV image sensors capable of reading UV ink on these documents. When cheques are printed, along with visible ink – the background and information on the cheque – is also printed a pattern or series of logos using ultraviolet ink. These patterns usually overlap the areas that are commonly altered (the “pay to,” “courtesy amount,” and “legal amount” fields) so that if any are altered, the UV pattern will be distorted. Banks are also protecting against forgery by encoding information onto the cheque using UV ink via serial number algorithms or 2D barcodes. These convey an additional security benefit, in that even if a forger was able to detect their presence, s/he could not reproduce a valid authentication code. Such machine-readable features have only become possible to employ within the past few years, now that they can be read by UV sensors on the cheque scanner. With the publication of our UV Whitepaper and having the largest installation base of UV enabled scanners around the world, Digital Check is seeing increasing momentum worldwide to implement UV detection as a straightforward solution to fraud deterrence through our network of international solution providers. For more information about Digital Check’s UV whitepaper, TS240-UV,or other Digital Check scanners, please contact us at 847-446-2285, or email us. |
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