Bank OZK Positive Pay and the Check Issue File
Bank OZK offers positive pay to its business and commercial customers as part of its treasury management services. Positive pay is a fraud control that compares the checks paid against your account to a list of checks you actually issued. If a check does not match the list, the bank flags it as an exception and asks you to decide whether to pay or return it.
This page explains how positive pay works at Bank OZK, what a check-issue file generally contains, and how you can build a file that matches your account using our free generator. The one rule that matters most: the exact file layout comes from the bank at setup, so always confirm your format with Bank OZK before you rely on it.
What Bank OZK offers
Under its Treasury Management services, Bank OZK lists fraud and risk control products that include Positive Pay with Payee Match, ACH Positive Pay, and Reverse Positive Pay. These are grouped as services to help minimize fraud exposure and safeguard your account. A few practical notes on the differences:
- Positive Pay with Payee Match checks the serial number and amount of each posted check against your issued list, and also compares the payee name printed on the check. Payee match catches altered payee names, but it only works if you include the payee in your upload.
- ACH Positive Pay applies the same review idea to electronic ACH debits rather than paper checks, letting you decide which debits are honored.
- Reverse Positive Pay flips the workload to you: instead of sending an issued list in advance, you review the checks the bank presents each day and decide which to pay or return.
If you issue a meaningful volume of checks, the standard check positive pay service is the one that uses an issued file. That file is what this page focuses on. You can read more about the difference between these models in our guide on positive pay versus reverse positive pay.
Where positive pay lives in the Bank OZK portal
Bank OZK delivers treasury services through its Business Online Banking platform, with positive pay sitting under the Treasury Management area of that portal. Bank OZK does not publish the underlying file specification on its public website, and it does not name the technology vendor behind the platform, so the precise screens and the upload format are set when your treasury management team enables the service on your account.
Because the layout is account-specific, do not copy a spec from another bank or another Bank OZK customer. If you need help locating the feature or getting your format, Bank OZK's Customer Care Team can be reached at 1-800-274-4482, Monday through Friday 7am to 7pm CT and Saturday 7am to 4pm CT.
What a check-issue file generally contains
A positive pay issued file is a simple list of the checks you wrote. Layouts vary by bank and by account, but nearly every check-issue file is built from the same handful of fields:
- Account number, the checking account the checks are drawn on.
- Check or serial number, the unique number printed on each check.
- Amount, the dollar value of the check. Some formats use a decimal point and some use an implied decimal with no point at all.
- Issue date, the date you wrote the check.
- Action code, a value that marks the record as issued or void.
- Payee name, optional, and required only if you use payee match.
Files come in two common shapes: delimited (such as CSV) and fixed width, where every field sits in a set column position. We are not publishing exact Bank OZK field positions here because we have not verified an official spec, and inventing one would only get your file rejected. Use the layout the bank gives you. For background on the building blocks, see our positive pay file format reference and the glossary.
The upload workflow
The general process at Bank OZK follows the same pattern as most positive pay services:
- Write your checks and export a check register from your accounting software.
- Build a check-issue file in the exact format Bank OZK provided for your account.
- Sign in to Business Online Banking and open the Treasury Management positive pay area.
- Upload the file before the bank's daily cutoff so the checks are registered before they are presented for payment.
- Each day, review any exceptions the bank flags and submit a pay or return decision on each one.
Watch the cutoff time, since a file uploaded late may not protect checks presented that day. Our note on cutoff times explains why timing matters.
Build a matching file from your check register
Our free positive pay generator turns a check register into a positive pay file. Paste or import your check data, then use the custom format builder to match Bank OZK's required field order, delimiter or column widths, date format, amount style, and action codes for issued and void checks. Because the builder is fully configurable, you can reproduce whatever layout the bank specified instead of forcing your data into a fixed template. Everything runs in your browser, so your check data never leaves your computer.
When your file is ready, run it through the validator to catch obvious formatting problems before you upload. If your bank rejects a file, our guide on a rejected positive pay file covers the usual causes.
Verify your first file with the bank
Treat your first upload as a test. Build the file, confirm with Bank OZK that the format is correct for your specific account, and send a small batch before you trust the process with a full run of checks. A layout that works for one Bank OZK customer may not match yours, and the only reliable source for your spec is the bank itself. You can confirm the current service details on the Bank OZK Treasury Management page.