A nationwide survey conducted by Boston-based strategy firm DOVE CONSULTING shows that since September 11th, 7% of U.S. consumers signed up for online billing or increased the number of bills they are now receiving online, based on concerns over handling mail or late bill payment. Another 32% of survey respondents said they started to think about receiving statements online in the weeks following the anthrax scares.

Herndon, VA, January 7, 2002 – The Internet Council of NACHA – The Electronic Payments Association is undertaking two new projects designed to provide financial institutions and merchants with educational resources on managing risk and preventing fraud associated with Internet-initiated payments.

"Managing risk and preventing fraud are both major concerns to organizations doing business on the Internet," said David L. Merritt, Chairman of the Internet Council and vice president and product design manager in the New Business Development Group of Mellon Global Cash Management. "Through these projects, the Internet Council will assist organizations in identifying the types of risk and fraud that pose threats to their businesses, and in adopting methods to mitigate them."

"A "Fraud 101" project will identify and catalog the various types of Internet payments fraud such as transaction-level fraud, identify theft, invalid accounts, and non-sufficient funds. The project will produce a white paper that provides guidance for preventing, detecting, and addressing fraudulent activity.

A risk management project will focus on the risks of specific Internet-initiated payment types such as automated clearing house (ACH), credit card, online debit card, offline debit card, and person-to-person payments. Categories of risk include credit, operational, fraud, systemic and reputation risk. The project participants will author an industry publication that provides guidance on managing the risks of Internet-initiated payments. Both the fraud and risk management projects will begin in January 2002 and are scheduled to be completed by mid-2002. In addition to the fraud and risk management projects, a third new project will examine the application of Unified Modeling Language techniques and tools to ACH processes. The goal of the project is to produce a set of UML documents and diagrams that depict ACH business processes and payment flows from various participant perspectives, and that can be used by the NACHA community in educating merchants and ACH participants about the ACH payment system. The UML project is scheduled to begin during the first quarter of 2002.