Validation of Masav payment file by using Hash function

A well-known problem of companies paying their suppliers through a payment medium file is the exposure to fraud through changing the content of the file from the moment it is extracted from SAP to a network folder until it is manually uploaded to the paying entities' systems, such as Masav, CITI Bank, etc.

As a solution, several banking organizations offer a direct connection from SAP to the banking payment system, for example Citibank offers a connection via CITI CONNECT (for more details click here) however until recently payers through Masav had no way of verifying a match between the file they created from SAP and the file received at Masav besides compensating control by sample or full comparison of the payment data.

A few weeks ago, Masav added to the payment file data displayed on their website a hash calculation. The website also contains a specification file with the Hash formula calculation. The Hash result promises a unique identifier for the content of the payment file, any change of a character in the file will result in a different calculation result.

By developing a simple program in SAP to calculate the hash function in a similar way, you can enable the user to copy the value from Masav, paste it in the parameters screen and get an indication whether there is an identity.

Although it is a semi manual process and relies on a work procedure according to which the payment approver in Masav will not carry out the approval before checking the identity of the hash, it is still a better solution compared to other available controls.

For more details, you are welcome to contact us at info@allegropro.co.il