Ring Ring

Extracted from the Farm Tender weekly Newsletter - Sign up and get the email every Wednesday morning before 5 am. www.farmtender.com.au

By Dwain Duxson.

We have been in the buying and selling game for over 10 years now and we have identified that the biggest concern from people within Ag is not getting paid. It's been a consistent one over the years and was heightened when we had the string of Grain trading companies go under.

Slow payments are still an issue, but it's improving, no payment is rare now, but you can never be too careful.

But the new trend is "invoice interception". So how it works is (I will put it in dot point form):

• You email an invoice to old Joey Blogs for the $95,000 Tractor you sold him.
• The criminals will firstly intercept your email to Joey.
• They will somehow get your email to Joey into his junk file, so he won't see it unless he is constantly checking his junk folder.
• They will replicate the invoice so it looks exactly like yours and change the bank account details.
• They will then email it to Joey under an email address that might look similar to yours.
• Joey then opens the email invoice, thinks it's yours and pays into the dodgy account, and the criminals collect the funds.

Dodgy as shit, I know.

And the worst thing about it is they target the bigger invoices, so Farmers and Ag service providers are vulnerable.

So what do we do to avoid what happens above?

That's where the good old phone call comes into play. 

So Joey, upon receiving the invoice, would ring you and verbally read out the bank details, and at that point, you would pick up any discrepancy.

I know it's a pain and it's an extra job to do, but making that phone call could save Joey $95k, and what if he doesn't get it back, he still has to pay you for the Tractor, so potentially Joey could have a payout of $95,000 twice.

A couple of other preventative measures I thought of could be that you put on each invoice, "before paying this invoice, please call us to confirm bank details". Of course, if it's intercepted, they will take that off, but it's probably good practice for everyone to have it on every invoice. 

Also, you could text Joey your bank details or text him a photo of the invoice, so if he doesn't make the call, at least he has it in 2 spots, and if they don't match, then alarm bells ring.

Here's the plug. We (Farm Tender) offer services whereby the threat of this happening can be minimised. We offer our NPS (New payment system) free to all our customers when buying and selling items.

How does it work:

1. We create a contract between buyer and seller.
2. We create the invoice on behalf of the seller to the buyer.
3. We email the invoice to the buyer from us (Farm Tender).
4. Buyer calls to confirm bank details.
5. The buyer pays, and we hold the funds in our (Farm Tender) account.
6. We alert the seller that funds have been cleared into our account.
7. We only then clear the funds to the seller if both parties are happy the goods have been delivered or picked up.
8. If both parties are happy, we call the seller to confirm the bank details (good practice).
9. Funds go to the seller less our commission with all the documentation.

It's a form of Escrow, but better because you have trusted humans overseeing the end-to-end process, checking and double checking. And it's free.

For more information on using NPS, ring Emma on 0411 560 458.

Click here to see some other cyber-criminal activities you might confront. 

We can't go back to posting cheques, so we have to find a better way. We believe this is it.

Ring ring. Next time you are paying for something, make that call....

End of message