The Next Big Thing to Stop Forged Payslips and Salary Certificates

How to prevent tampered Payslips and Salary Certificates

Payslips and Salary Certificates serve as proof for many purposes including applying for a loan, for a visa, an opening of a bank or brokerage account or other similar transactions. Since it’s an important input for such processing, there is an incentive to manipulate the information to suit the requirements, improve eligibility or otherwise burnish the credentials of the applicant.

How widespread is this problem?

Payslip and Salary Certificate frauds have been happening with unfailing recurrence across the world. A representative sample of such news clips will highlight the scale and magnitude of the fraud.

• Youth held for credit card fraud | Mumbai News - Times of India.
• ANZ warns of sophisticated payslip fraud | Newcastle Herald.
• Avoid the great payslip slip-up | Business | M&G.
• Fake payslips that cheat the banks | Money | The Guardian.

While it can be broadly classified as the functional responsibility of HR & Payroll, the problem is widespread across industries causing a headache to financial systems and economies. Isn’t there a way in which this problem can be addressed? After all with better technology and document protection systems, there should be a relatively easy mechanism to tackle this problem.

What is the solution

Any solution to tackle this problem should have the following main components

1. A document generation system which generates secure payslips or other HR documents that can only be done by the authorised issuer. Hence it helps to prevent unauthorised manipulation or tampering.

2. An easy and simple mechanism to validate such issued documents that can be easily used by third-parties to authenticate and trust the information.

3. Payslip and Salary Certificate data is highly sensitive and any solution should make sure that the privacy of genuine employees is preserved and maintained. This rules our centralised portal based solutions because they become attractive hacker targets and also prone to post facto manipulation.

In addition, it has to be simple and cost-effective to deploy and should be scalable as per the needs of the organization.

Enter Intelligent QR Code embedded Payslips - The Innovation that arrests Payslip Fraud

Qryptal Secure QR Code document generation system helps to address this problem by making sure that all such documents are system generated centrally and the information on them is captured in the form of a Qryptal Secure QR code before it gets printed either physically or electronically. In addition, the Secure QR code will also have the digital signature of the issuing organisation so that unauthorized modifications can be identified and stopped.

This can be then validated by different stakeholders to whom it is presented (other employers, banks, embassies and visa processing service providers etc) and the verified contents can be used with full confidence for any required purpose.

A sample of a payslip/salary certificate with a QR code encapsulating the details is shown here. On scanning the code all the details contained inside it are visible for verification.

Secure QR Code embedded Payslip and verification

A Secure QR code generation and verification system for payslips and salary certificates offers significant benefits

• It works for both printed and electronic documents

• It can only be generated by the issuing organisation and cannot be faked or tampered by anyone else

• It allows verification of such documents by third parties on a self-service basis

• Strengthens personal data protection as information is accessed through the QR code and by the use of an authorised app only. Also since the information is stored inside the QR code and is validated and checked on a need to know basis, the privacy of all the parties concerned is maintained & there may not be any requirement to get into tripartite information sharing issues

• Data domicile issues may be minimal as no online infrastructure is required

So the next time you wonder on how you can solve Payslip Frauds, just remember there is a simple solution - “Secure QR Codes for payroll”

This article first appeared in Times of India on April 3, 2019 under the headline - How to prevent tampered Payslips.

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How does this Secure QR solution work?