Trustmark Bank is tapping fintech Alkami to combat the growing losses from check fraud, even as fewer people use the payment method.  

Banks who serve business clients regularly handle check fraud issues, Ryan Hill, product director at $18.5 billion Trustmark Bank, said during a webinar hosted by Alkami on June 11.

“We are constantly making our clients aware that these are risks to their business,” Hill said. Check thefts and check washing are the most used fraudulent attempts that financial institutions deal with, he added.  

The bank is using Alkami’s Positive Pay solution, which allows account holders to approve or reject withdrawals from their accounts if they don’t recognize the charge or the receiver, Hill said. 

Businesses can create a pre-approved list of trusted vendors and partners to automate payments, reducing the need to approve each payment, Todd Glenn, sales executive at Alkami, said during the webinar. 

The Positive Pay solution can help FIs and businesses reduce ACH fraud and check fraud, Glenn said, adding that the solution can be provided to businesses through their digital banking platforms. 

Trustmark Bank’s Hill said the bank is leveraging Alkami’s Positive Pay tool to combat fraud using: 

• Standard Positive Pay, which verifies check numbers and amounts; 

• Payee Positive Pay, which adds payee name validation to prevent altered checks; and 

• Reverse Positive Pay, which allows manual review for accounts with low check volume.  

In 2024, Positive Pay stopped $3.6 billion of fraudulent transactions, Glenn said. Alkami is onboarding multiple other clients for the solution this year, he said without naming specific FIs. 

Pervasive problem 

Nearly 63% of businesses reported that checks are the most frequently targeted payment method in 2025 and 79% of businesses were victims of check frauds during the year, Alkami’s Glenn said during the webinar, citing the 2025 AFP Payments Fraud and Control report from the Association for Financial Professionals.  

Despite that, 75% of businesses surveyed are going to continue to use checks due to ease of accessibility, Glenn said. 

According to the Q2 2024 Datos Insights corporate banking executive council report, the most prevalent check fraud methods include: 

• Check sashing — altering amounts or payee names on stolen checks; 

• Check theft — stealing checks from mailboxes or internal sources; and  

• Counterfeit checks — creating fake checks using stolen account details. 

No financial institution is safe from check fraud because a major demographic of customers still write checks frequently, Eric Chen inspector in charge of the US Postal Inspection Service Criminal Investigations Group, said during the webinar. 

Check fraud hits financial institutions of all sizes, he said, noting: 

• Smaller FIs (less than $10 billion in assets) report average losses in the hundreds of thousands annually; 

• Mid-sized banks ($10 billion to $30 billion) face an average of $1 million to $3 million in yearly losses; and 

• Larger institutions ($30 billion to $100 billion) average $5 million in fraud losses, with some mega-banks losing up to $14 million. 

In September 2024, JPMorgan handled a significant check fraud event in which consumers were depositing fake checks and withdrawing large sums of cash from accounts that potentially lacked funds to cover the withdrawals, according to Bank Automation News’s prior reporting. 

An April report from Fortune stated that the $3.5 trillion bank had recouped $580,000 of the $600,000 lost. 

Check fraud losses in the past 365 days is nearly $52 billion, Chen said, adding that the number is growing each year as businesses continue to use the payment method. 

Moving away from checks 

Despite fewer checks being written, check fraud is becoming more common, with banks issuing about 680,000 reports of check fraud in 2022, nearly double the number from 2021, a March 25 White House release stated.  

The Trump administration is recommending that the U.S. government move away from checks, arguing that an electronic–based payment method will combat fraud and improve efficiency, according to Bank Automation News’s prior reporting.