Payment Verification Controls for SMEs: Reduce Business Email Compromise Risk
Why familiar messages still need checking
Business email compromise does not always look like a dramatic phishing email. It may be a supplier asking to change bank details, a director requesting an urgent transfer, or a customer asking for a refund to a new account. The message can use a compromised mailbox, a convincing display name or information copied from earlier conversations. Staff need a process that supports sensible checking without making routine work impossible.
Define high-risk payment events
Write down which events require extra verification: new supplier bank details, changed account numbers, urgent or unusual payments, first payments to a new beneficiary, refunds to a different account and requests that bypass normal approval. Include thresholds based on value, destination or business impact. People should not have to improvise the rule while under pressure.
Use an independent channel
Verification must use contact information already held in the supplier or customer record, not a phone number or link inside the new request. Call a known number, use a previously agreed portal or confirm through an authorised contact. Ask the person to confirm the change and record who approved it. A reply to the suspicious email is not independent verification.
Protect approval and payment access
Separate the person who requests a payment from the person who approves and releases it. Use individual accounts, multi-factor authentication and least-privilege access. Review dormant finance access and shared mailboxes. Ensure payment instructions cannot be changed silently and that unusual activity produces an alert or manual review.
Make escalation easy
If a message feels unusual, staff should know where to report it and what not to do. Preserve the email, do not delete evidence, pause the transaction and notify the named finance and security owners. Run short tabletop exercises so the team practises calling a supplier, escalating a suspected compromise and contacting the bank quickly.
Where Tradify Services fits
Tradify Services can help review identity, email, approval and payment workflows, then turn the findings into practical controls that fit an SME’s systems and staff capacity. The aim is faster, safer decisions rather than a policy document nobody follows.
– Employee Phishing Reporting Workflow for SMEs
## Make the control usable
Controls fail when they depend on memory or heroic caution. Add the verification step to the finance or procurement workflow, place the instruction beside the payment action and give staff a clear exception route. Train people with realistic examples rather than generic warnings. Review near misses as process evidence, not as a reason to blame the person who reported them. Check suppliers’ known contacts periodically and remove old instructions from shared folders. If a compromise is suspected, speed matters: pause payment, contact the bank through its official channel and preserve the original evidence.
The objective is not to distrust every message. It is to make unusual payment changes slower to approve and easier to verify.
## Review note
Set a named owner, review the workflow after the first month and keep the evidence needed to explain decisions. Small, regular reviews are easier to sustain than a large annual project, and they help the business adjust controls as customers, staff, systems and suppliers change.
## Review note
Set a named owner, review the workflow after the first month and keep the evidence needed to explain decisions. Small, regular reviews are easier to sustain than a large annual project, and they help the business adjust controls as customers, staff, systems and suppliers change.
A useful review asks four questions. What changed since the last period? Which cases or costs required the most effort? Where did the process depend on a manual workaround? What single improvement would reduce risk or delay next? Keep the answers short and link them to a named action. Share the outcome with the teams that create the underlying data, because they often see the cause before management sees the metric. Recheck permissions, integrations, notifications and ownership after major system changes. If a control produces too many false alerts, refine the trigger rather than teaching people to ignore it. If a measure never leads to an action, remove it or replace it with a more useful signal. This keeps the workflow practical as the SME grows.