A new sort code from a familiar address
A creator's manager emails finance: the creator has changed banks, please use these details for this month's payments. The email looks right, the signature is right, and the timing fits, since several invoices are due. Finance updates the details. The payment goes out. A week later, the manager calls to ask where the money is. The email came from a lookalike address, or from a real mailbox that had been compromised.
Even without fraud, bank details cause trouble. They are typed from invoices with a digit wrong, sent in DMs, or differ between a creator's own invoice and their management company's.
Why influencer payments are exposed
Influencer agencies pay many small suppliers they may never have met, often only once or twice, which is exactly the pattern fraudsters look for.
- New creators are set up on every campaign, from details on an invoice.
- Details come by email, DM and message, including from managers acting for the creator.
- Changes are requested by email and accepted without a second check.
- The account name is not compared with the creator's or company's name.
- Finance is under pressure to pay quickly because creators chase.
What one wrong payment costs
A payment sent to a fraudster is often hard or impossible to recover, and the creator still needs paying, so you pay twice. A payment with a mistyped number bounces or goes astray, and the creator waits. The relationship with the creator and their manager takes a hit either way. How you should respond to a fraud is a matter for your bank and advisers; the better position is not to send the payment in the first place.
The more subtle cost is that finance, having been caught once, slows every payment down with manual calls, and the creators who are paid late start chasing again.
A payment details record with checks
- Creators or their management enter bank details once, through a secure link, not by email or DM.
- Where your bank or a service you use supports it, the account name is checked against the payee name before the details are accepted, and any mismatch is shown to finance.
- Details are stored encrypted and shown masked, and only named finance staff can view or change them.
- Any change request, however it arrives, is logged and the payment details are locked until the change is confirmed through a different channel, such as a call to a number already on the record.
- Payments due to a creator whose details have just changed are held until confirmation, and the account team is told why.
- Details are passed to your accounts package or bank only from the record, never retyped from an invoice.
- Every change is audited: who asked, how, who confirmed, when.
| Event | What happens | Payment |
|---|---|---|
| New creator | Details via secure link, name check | Released after checks |
| Change requested by email | Logged, locked, call to known number | Held until confirmed |
| Name does not match account | Flagged to finance | Held for decision |
| Management company invoices | Company details held separately | Paid to company as agreed |
These checks reduce risk; they do not remove it. Your bank's guidance and your own finance controls still apply.
A calmer payment run
New creators set up their details once, and the name check catches a typo before any payment. When an email arrives asking to change a creator's bank, the record locks, finance calls the number already held, and the real creator says they have not changed banks. The payment goes to the correct account on time. Account managers can tell creators exactly why a payment is held, if one ever is.
Finance also stops being the bottleneck, because details are correct first time and nothing needs retyping.
Are your creator payments exposed?
- Creator bank details are taken from invoices or emails.
- Changes are accepted by email without a call.
- Account names are not checked against payees.
- Bank details are visible to anyone with finance access.
- You have had a payment go astray.