Which of the following process controls BEST mitigates the risk of an employee issuing fraudulent payments to a vendor?

Performing credit verification helps assess a vendor's financial stability, but it does not prevent an employee from creating a fraudulent vendor entry and issuing payments.

System access reviews are important for general security and least privilege, but they do not directly address the process risk of fraudulent payments where an employee might have legitimate access to parts of a process.

Regular reconciliation of payments to check registers is a detective control that identifies fraudulent payments after they have occurred, rather than preventing them upfront.

Segregation of duties (SoD) is a fundamental internal control designed to prevent fraud and errors by ensuring that no single individual has complete control over a critical transaction from beginning to end. By separating the ability to add or modify vendor details from the ability to approve and process payments, it becomes significantly harder for an employee to create a fictitious vendor and then make unauthorized payments.