Positive pay exceptions, decided before the cutoff — the check and the client's issue record in one picture
Every exception decided by a named person before the cutoff, not left to the default.
See one case, screen by screen ↓Positive Pay Exceptions is agent software for bank treasury operations and their business clients. It matches every presented check and ACH debit against the client's own issue file and authorization list, draws the issue record over the presented check image so the differing fields are visible at a glance, names the difference in one sentence, and recommends pay or return with the zone it read behind every reason — with a named person deciding every item and a second person checking every bank-made return.
AI use cases in banking: a buyer's guide to agentic AI for bank and credit union operations →
Updated
Positive pay exceptions are the items a bank cannot post without asking: a presented check whose payee, amount, number or date is not what the client said it issued, or an ACH debit from an originator the client never authorized. Somebody has to decide each one, pay or return, before an early-afternoon cutoff — because a paying bank must settle, return or send notice of dishonor by midnight of the next banking day after it receives an item, or own it (UCC 4-301 and 4-302).
Today that decision arrives as a row in a banking portal saying "payee mismatch". The person deciding does not see the check beside what the client said it should look like, is not told in words which fields moved, gets no reasoning over the client's own payment history, and gets no help at all with the question that matters most — has this check been washed? Miss the cutoff and the agreement's default applies, pay or return, and a clock has made the decision. Positive Pay Exceptions puts six agents in front of that reading, so the person spends the window deciding rather than hunting.
Estimated minutes on a single exception, by hand and with the agents, at the demonstration bank. Checking the client's own payment history is the step most desks skip entirely for want of time. The "after" column is a little over two minutes, and most of that is the two people who have to sign.
Six agents match every presented item against the client's own issue record, read the image zone by zone and raise the signs of washing; a named person decides, and a second person checks.
A positive pay exception at Tessaly Community Bank: check 10482 from Bramwell Dental Group, issued for $1,284.00 to a medical supplier and presented for $9,284.00 to someone nobody at the client has heard of. Here is what happens to it, screen by screen, in the working solution.
28,460 presented checks and ACH debits are compared with 1,180 clients' issue files and authorization lists, field by field. 95 become exceptions — about one item in 300 — and each row carries what the agents found, what the item is worth and what they recommend.
Twenty-eight are on one analyst's desk: eight waiting on a client, fourteen for him, two with the fraud unit and four already decided.
The item opens as the check itself, with the client's own issue record laid over it as a translucent layer. Where the two records agree, the layer is quiet; where they differ, the issued value is stamped beside the presented one, right where it sits on the check. The eye answers "is this the check my client wrote?" before anyone reads a figure.
Presented $9,284.00 · the client issued $1,284.00 · the difference $8,000.00 · the client decides until 2:00 PM, with a reminder at 12:30 PM and escalation at 1:30 PM.
"The payee reads Jordan K. Mills where the issue record says Lakeshore Medical Supply, and the amount reads $9,284.00 where the issue record says $1,284.00 — $8,000.00 more. The check number and the issue date match." Under it, all four fields side by side with the zone each was read from and a confidence.
A recommendation is never a score. Six zones come off the image — check number 0.99, date 0.98, payee line 0.94, amount box 0.97, amount in words 0.92, signature 0.96 — each with the characters the agent read and what the issue record says for it. Anything under 0.90 is held for a person instead of reported.
The signature matches the card the core banking system holds, which is what makes this an alteration rather than a forged check.
Four signs, each with the evidence behind it: the original payee still reading through the overwrite, a washed 1 under the 9 of $9,284.00, a payee absent from 4,118 checks and 312 payees over eighteen months when the largest first-time payee was $4,600, and an item mailed from the client's own office and presented 420 miles away six days later.
Each sign names the published red flag it matches. The agent raises a question with what it looked at; it never calls an item fraudulent and it never rejects one.
The bank never decides an item inside the client's window. Danielle sees the same overlay, the same sentence and the same recommendation, chooses to return it, and picks a reason from the codes that fit that action — the decision cannot be taken without one. Her name, the time, the reason and both images go on the record.
Marcus Trelane prepares the return instruction with the item-processing reason N, altered or fictitious item. Because $9,284.00 is above the bank's $5,000 review amount, it goes to the Treasury Operations Supervisor rather than a second analyst, and Noelle Baptiste checks and signs it. Nobody checks their own work.
The agents built the instruction and stopped; an agent may never send one. The return goes to the payments hub at 11:34 AM, by an expeditious means, with 12 hours and 26 minutes left on the deadline the bank cannot miss.
The cutoff is set so the whole chain — the client, the analyst, the check and the dispatch — fits inside the midnight deadline with hours to spare.
Two or more signs open a referral, whatever was decided, and it carries both images, the issue row, every zone read and the decision. Every role outside the fraud unit sees that a referral exists and nothing about a report. The client's own view of the same check says only that it was returned as an altered or fictitious item.
People and agents sit in one trail that cannot be edited: every reason code, every zone with its confidence, every clause quoted, every message sent to a client and every view of an unmasked account number. It exports as an examiner pack, and a referral is in that pack and in nothing a client receives.
The same check, seen by the four people who carry it — what their morning looked like, and what it looks like now.
Six agents match every presented item against the client's own issue record, read the image zone by zone and raise the signs of washing; a named person decides, and a second person checks.
Treats one presented item as one unit of work: runs the other agents in order and keeps the client's window, the bank's cutoff and the midnight deadline on one clock.
Compares each presented check and ACH debit with the client's issue file and authorization list, field by field, citing the zone on the image and the row in the file.
Reads the payee line off the image and matches it to the issue record, allowing the client's own registered abbreviations and d/b/a names.
Looks for washed payees, altered amounts and the published mail-theft red flags, reasoning over this client's own eighteen months of issued items and payees.
Writes the client exactly what differs, in plain words, with both images, and reminds and escalates against the cutoff.
Prepares the pay or return instruction with its reason code and deadline, and builds the examiner pack.
The client decides its own items; a bank-made return above the review amount is signed by the supervisor. The agents propose; a named person decides.
13 screens from the working solution, on its sample data. Pick one to see it large.
Every clause an exception is judged against is the bank's own setting, versioned, with the regulation behind it and the superseded version kept.
| Setting | Default | Choose from |
|---|---|---|
| Who decides a client's exception | The client, until the cutoff | Set per treasury services agreement |
| A bank-made return is checked by the supervisor above | $5,000 | Stepped, with a live preview of what it would catch |
| A person may never check their own decision | Locked on | Cannot be turned off |
| A return is dispatched inside the midnight deadline | Locked on | UCC 4-301 and 4-302 |
| Amount tolerance | $0.00 — any difference | Set per bank |
| Payee match uses the client's registered abbreviations | On | The client keeps its own name list |
| Signs that open a fraud referral | Two or more | From the bank's own signs catalog |
| Agent confidence threshold | 0.90 | Below it, a person reads the zone |
Every figure is labelled: a target the solution is built to, an estimate, a typical published result, or a proven one.
Sources: UCC 4-301 and 4-302, the midnight deadline, and UCC 3-407 and 4-401(d) on altered items · Regulation CC, 12 CFR 229.30 and 229.31, the paying bank's return and the expeditious-return standard · FinCEN Alert FIN-2023-Alert003 on mail theft-related check fraud (February 27, 2023), the red flags quoted here, and more than 680,000 check-fraud reports in 2022 · FinCEN Financial Trend Analysis (September 9, 2024): $688 million across 15,417 reports in six months, an average of about $44,774, with 44% of the items altered and deposited · AFP 2025 Payments Fraud and Control Survey: 63% of organizations faced check fraud in 2024 · Nacha Operating Rules, return reason R29 · Bank Secrecy Act confidentiality and retention, 31 CFR 1020.320(e) and 1010.430(d) · "target" = design goal, measured in the live solution · "demo" = seen in the working solution, on its sample data · "typical" = published figures · "estimated" = our arithmetic on the demonstration bank's own month. Tessaly Community Bank, every business client and every person named on this page are fictional, and no account or routing number here belongs to anyone.
Positive Pay Exceptions is agent software for bank treasury operations and their business clients. It matches every presented check and ACH debit against the client's own issue file and authorization list, draws the issue record over the presented check image so the differing fields are visible at a glance, names the difference in one sentence, and recommends pay or return with the zone it read behind every reason — with a named person deciding every item and a second person checking every bank-made return.
The client tells its bank what it issued — check number, payee, amount and issue date — and the bank matches everything presented against that record. Check positive pay compares the number, amount and date; payee positive pay compares the payee name as well; ACH positive pay compares a debit against the originators and caps the client authorized. Anything that does not match becomes an exception, and somebody has to decide it before the bank's cutoff.
An item the bank cannot post without asking: a presented check whose payee, amount, number or date is not what the client's issue file says, an item that is stale-dated, post-dated or a duplicate, or an ACH debit from an originator the client never authorized or above the cap it set. Each one is a pay-or-return decision with a deadline attached.
The default written in that client's treasury services agreement applies — pay or return. The solution never leaves that silent: the clause is quoted, an analyst applies it with a reason code, and a second person checks it, so the record says which rule applied, who applied it and who checked. The reminder and the escalation before the cutoff exist so this is the exception rather than the routine.
A washed check matches the client's own stock, check number, date and signature perfectly; only the payee and the amount moved. The fraud signs agent looks at the image for one layer of ink over another, compares the stock and layout with items the client has issued before, and reasons over the client's own eighteen months of payees — so "a payee this client has never paid, for twice the largest first-time payee it has ever written" is arithmetic with the file behind it. It raises the sign with the evidence and hands the item to a person; it never calls an item fraudulent.
No. An agent may never decide pay or return, never dispatch an instruction and never file a report, and those three rules cannot be switched off. Agents match, read zones, raise signs, write to the client and prepare the instruction; a named person decides, a second person checks every bank-made return, and a person dispatches it.
A paying bank must settle, return or send notice of dishonor by midnight of the banking day following receipt (UCC 4-301 and 4-302), and a return is sent by an expeditious means under Regulation CC, 12 CFR 229.31. The client's decision cutoff, the reminder, the escalation and the agreement's default are set inside that, and the screen shows how much of the deadline was left when the return went out.
No. Opening a referral is a named action restricted to the fraud unit's content; every other role sees a restricted marker and nothing about a report. The client agent is instructed never to mention a referral in any message, the client's view of the item carries the decision and nothing else, and an export to a client redacts every referral — 31 CFR 1020.320(e).
Every analyzed relationship compared with its signed schedule, every month.
1-min demoTreasury Management Client ServicesEvery user, limit and entitlement change verified before it is made, by two people.
1-min demoACH Originator Risk AssessmentEvery originator measured against all three Nacha levels every day, not once a year.
1-min demoWe'll run Positive Pay Exceptions on a sample of your own presented items, issue files and ACH authorizations.