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Thread: Business to business electronic only payments

  1. #1
    Senior Member Tradd's Avatar
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    Business to business electronic only payments

    I’ve been in the int’l transportation business nearly 30 years. Freight payments, etc., have always been made to the carriers via checks. A number of the carriers are moving to e-payments only. ONE Line goes to it 7/1. Maersk charges a $50 handling fee for checks now. Zim is at $100. All due to covid and a lot of people working from home, of course. Plus there’s the delays with USPS and the express couriers. Payments are via ACH or maybe PayCargo, which is a portal for paying many different transportation companies (carriers, warehouses, customs brokers/forwarders, etc). My company (freight forwarder) takes e-checks, too.

    Holy crap. You would have thought people were asked to do something so complicated. The reactions are ridiculous. Some people actually want to still write checks and send them out overnight via UPS/FedEx. Last I checked, a basic overnight package is something like $20-$25 with some sort of a discount. I’m just laughing enjoying the reactions. Pretty damned funny. Come into the 21st Century, folks! It’s faster and cheaper to do stuff online.

    You guys still have accounting departments or customers that want paper checks sent via the post office? Let’s hear your crazy stories.

  2. #2
    Senior Member jp1's Avatar
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    If you want to be a rockstar at your new company talk to them about implementing social engineering training for anyone responsible for facilitating e-payments. One of the common things cyber criminals do is spoof themselves as a legit coworker or vendor requesting that the wiring instructions be changed so that money ends up in the criminal's account. Or send fake invoices. We pay claims on this fairly regularly and have to underwrite to it when looking at cyber insurance submissions. Even I, a cyber insurance underwriter, has been nailed by the fake phishing emails my employer sent out to test us. Twice in the past five years. (to be fair one looked EXACTLY like an email from the help desk and I had a four day old ticket at the time and I was like "THANK GOD! THEY ARE FINALLY FIXING THIS PROBLEM!" And then I clicked the link in the email and it popped up a screen "you failed the test. This was not a legitimate email, blah blah blah" It's fairly easy to set up procedures to avoid getting screwed by the scams, but it takes a little thought and effort. Such as requiring that any changes to wiring directions be confirmed by communication via a different way than how the original change request was received or requiring a more senior person to sign off on any electronic transfers if they are over a certain dollar amount. Since this is what I do all day I could bore you with this for hours. If you want more of my thoughts on the subject DM me and I'll bore just you instead of all of simple living.

  3. #3
    Senior Member iris lilies's Avatar
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    You guys! This is interesting! Thanks for a peek into current business practices.

    Tradd my close friend worked for K=Line which was folded into ONE. She retired at the time of the merge.
    Last edited by iris lilies; 7-12-21 at 10:09am.

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    Senior Member razz's Avatar
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    Frankly, whether for business or personal, I am concerned re e-commerce. As mentioned above, it is seemingly easy for e-commerce activities to be diverted, either inadvertently or with unscrupulous intent, with a simple click setting in motion unknown consequences.
    I keep trying to learn how to personally protect myself but it seems that e-commerce systems are not keeping pace with or gaining against the challenges. The security updates on my Apple products alone are so frequent these days.

    What it must like for industry to manage these systems and stay on top with alternatives, updates, and trainings requires constant oversight which is so costly to maintain.
    As Cicero said, “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.”

  5. #5
    Senior Member Tradd's Avatar
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    IL, now I do remember you mentioning your friend before.

    At the company where I was for 13 years, there was one customer who had very high duties since they brought in tobacco-related times. Duty might be $100K per shipment. They refused to have Customs direct debit the duties from their account as they didn’t want the feds mucking around in their bank account. They would FedEx a check and then we’d send it down with the paperwork to Customs with the local messenger service that made the rounds. Several times they had checks get lost with FedEx and payments were late to Customs. They still refused to go electronic even after getting hit with fines.

  6. #6
    Senior Member iris lilies's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tradd View Post
    IL, now I do remember you mentioning your friend before.

    At the company where I was for 13 years, there was one customer who had very high duties since they brought in tobacco-related times. Duty might be $100K per shipment. They refused to have Customs direct debit the duties from their account as they didn’t want the feds mucking around in their bank account. They would FedEx a check and then we’d send it down with the paperwork to Customs with the local messenger service that made the rounds. Several times they had checks get lost with FedEx and payments were late to Customs. They still refused to go electronic even after getting hit with fines.
    Their comptroller was a conservative dude, I will bet.

  7. #7
    Senior Member jp1's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by razz View Post
    Frankly, whether for business or personal, I am concerned re e-commerce. As mentioned above, it is seemingly easy for e-commerce activities to be diverted, either inadvertently or with unscrupulous intent, with a simple click setting in motion unknown consequences.
    I keep trying to learn how to personally protect myself but it seems that e-commerce systems are not keeping pace with or gaining against the challenges. The security updates on my Apple products alone are so frequent these days.

    What it must like for industry to manage these systems and stay on top with alternatives, updates, and trainings requires constant oversight which is so costly to maintain.
    Personally I have embraced online payments wherever possible. But I try to do so safely, which for me means that I use a different browser for all my online banking (chrome instead of firefox that I use for day to day internet), I access the bank website from a bookmarked link, not by typing in their address. I have random long passwords for everything. I have enabled two factor authentication at all my financial institutions using a google voice phone # so that if a criminal manages to get my phone # transferred to themselves they still can't do 2FA to access any of my accounts. I use made up answers for all the security questions at financial institutions. Those answers are stored in my password manager software. I only use my credit union's bill pay service. The people I'm paying don't have access to pull money out of my account. More generally I have my computer OS and browser all set to auto update as new versions become available so that I always have installed whatever the latest security updates are.

    I'm also the guy who, when it was time to wire large sums of money when we bought our house, called the escrow company using the phone # already stored in my phone, to verify that the email she had sent with wiring instructions was in fact from her and accurate. And later that day, after the money transferred out of my account, I called her again to have her confirm that it had arrived in their account.

  8. #8
    Senior Member Tradd's Avatar
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    Business to business is a different animal than personal.

    More later.

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