Author: Ady

Open Banking Initiatives Around the World

Post author By Ady
Post date August 22, 2022
Categories Bank

Open banking has become the “IT” word of the financial industry. But, it is not just for creating hype, open banking has some incredible real-world applications.

In case you’re not familiar with open banking, it’s the process of banks and other institutions allowing customers to share their financial data with trusted entities. Open banking/open finance makes bank-to-bank payments easier and allows customers to access all their data in a single place. Everyone here at DIRO and other financial institutions considers open banking to be the future of the financial industry.

If you don’t have the right knowledge, it may be hard to understand the benefits open banking brings to the table. There are multiple levels of open banking that offer different features.

In this guide, we’ll go over different open banking models, and how countries all over the world are utilizing them to their benefit.

Brief History of Open Banking Around the Globe

The term “Open Banking” first came onto the scene in July 2013, with the launch of the EU’s PSD2 proposal. In which it was recommended that banks allow trusted third-party sources to access customer financial data. These early suggestions went on to become the Open Banking landscape of today.

Jump to 2022, and Open banking has become a global phenomenon. At least 87% of countries have some type of open banking API. In the European Union, there are over 400 third-party service providers. They are authorized to access financial data using open banking.

State of Open Banking Framework Around the World

Each country has its own way of leveraging an open banking framework. Here’s a peek into the current open banking landscape across the world:

1. State of Open Banking in the UK

Open Banking regulations in the UK require the top 8 banks to create APIs that third-party service providers can use. These APIs have to establish a secure way of data sharing.

The deadline to create these APIs was all the way back in January 2018. While the regulation only asked the 9 banks to create these APIs, other institutions automatically followed suit.

In the UK, third-party service providers can use the Open banking API in two ways.

The TPPs can be Account Information Service Providers, which allows them to get access to payer information and data including balance information and verification.

Or, the TPPs can be Payment Initiation Service Providers, which allows them to make instant bank-to-bank payments, without needing a card, manual transfer, or direct debit transaction.

The UK is definitely leading the charts when it comes to open banking frameworks, innovation, and customer inclusion. Based on a Report in December 2020, there are over 294 regulated providers of Open Banking in the UK.

Unfortunately, even with this strong open banking product usage in the UK, only 102 out of 294 entities have a live customer offering. Although, the reports suggest an upward trajectory in upcoming years.

While there’s a positive outlook on open banking, a lot of customers are still suspicious and reluctant to use their service. Less than 25% of all UK consumers are happy sharing their financial data with third-party providers.

2. State of Open Banking in the EU

There will be some key differences in all the individual countries across the EU, but the group as an entity is going strong. They’re working strongly towards building a complete open banking structure.

Even though the European Commission made recommendations all the way back in 2013, the deadline for PSD2 readiness was in 2018. Relevant APIs from Europe is about 1 year behind the UK. With this slow API implementation, Europe can be seen as lagging behind on the global stage.

European open banking APIs are lagging behind the UK ones, but we can expect to see a sudden growth in the TPPs using the APIs. 58% of all European FinTech decision makers consider open banking as a great opportunity.

3. State of Open Banking in the US

Unlike the UK and Europe, the USA has taken an industry-based approach to open banking. Industries themselves are building APIs and infrastructure without any oversight from regulatory bodies.

The current US Open Banking framework has been limited to account information solutions, most of which are done using screen scraping. But Screen Scraping isn’t an effective solution as it has led to some major data leaks.

The US is definitely behind the UK and Europe in the race for open banking, and the demand for new technologies is growing at an incredible rate. Especially after the Covid-19 pandemic. As the rest of the world is starting to put efforts to build a proper open banking framework, global companies headquartered in the US will start to take advantage of international efforts.

Other Innovators in Open Banking Landscape

There are some other countries that are making great strides when it comes to open banking. Here’s a peek into their efforts:

1. New Zealand

New Zealand’s approach to open banking has been pretty hands-off. There have been some discussions of Consumer Data Rights, but there’s nothing solid.

2. Canada

Similar to the US, Canada has also taken an industry-led approach. However, there are some government bodies looking at how to create more regulatory oversight moving forward. According to a 2019 report, the implementation of a structured framework would address consumer privacy concerns.

3. India

The open banking framework has been well established in India since 2016. This implementation was spearheaded by the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). UPI allows consumers to access their bank accounts, and make instant payments to other banks. India is moving forward with a hybrid approach to open banking.

Tags open banking effects, open banking initiatives, open banking regulations

KYC Requirements in Singapore in 2022

Post author By Ady
Post date August 16, 2022
Categories KYC/KYB

Singapore is one of the world’s leading financial hubs and also one of the Asia-Pacific leaders. So, it makes sense that businesses all over the globe want to invest in the Singapore markets. Economic stability makes it an even better option for investors globally. Singapore for years has been following a pro-business attitude that encourages global trade.

Anyone wishing to do business or onboard Singapore customers must follow the clear and robust KYC and AML guidelines. These KYC guidelines Singapore are set by regulatory bodies in Singapore to prevent ID theft fraud and the rise of money laundering.

KYC Regulations Singapore as Set by MAS

The KYC guidelines Singapore are built and implemented by the “Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).” And the Singapore KYC requirements specify that digital verification is acceptable, but businesses have to take appropriate measures, these include:

Verify phone number
Address proof verification
Employment status confirmation (with user consent)
Bank statement verification (for verifying user income)
Certification of ID Documents by lawyers or Notary
Initial deposits using a cheque from a bank in Singapore
Other ID verification checks

No verification is needed until a customer moves forward with the account opening process. This is only applicable if there are internal policies that limit access to financial services before customer verification is complete.

Singapore Digital Identity System

Singapore has one of the best digital identity systems. The Singapore digital identity system completely relies on mobile apps and biometric data to make the onboarding process faster.

Citizens of Singapore can use the Singpass app to sign up for a government and private sector services. Singpass is connected to Myinfo (a service that provides verified personal and corporate data) which leads to the remote signing of the documents.

There’s also a step beyond customer identification, that is the general KYC rules such as due diligence and customer monitoring.

If a customer is on the PEP list or poses a greater risk for money laundering, then an enhanced due diligence level is required. Even greater levels of due diligence are needed if:

Transaction activities change
The institution changes document standards
Lack of appropriate identification information
There’s a physical change in relations with the customer

Beneficial Ownership Verification in Singapore

The steps to verifying businesses and beneficial owners lie outside the basic KYC and CDD norms in Singapore. Any director, partner, or entity that has executive-level control over the organization’s operations is considered a beneficial owner. Identities of these beneficial owners have to be identified by businesses.

The Digital identity system in Singapore can also help in hastening this process. Myinfo Business app can automatically provide verified business information and beneficial ownership information data. The app can do this by fetching data from government sources.

An additional level of due diligence is required only if there are any changes in the ownership.

Payment Services Act in Singapore

The Payment Services Act in Singapore undertakes the Licensing and regulation for all the payment service providers. Organizations that have to follow these rules include:

Domestic money transfer services
International money transfer services
Account creation services
Merchant acquisition services
E-money issuance services
Digital payment token services

The biggest impact of these regulations is on entities operating the crypto and the NFT industry. Any entity that works in buying and selling digital assets, offers token exchange, or promotes these services may fall under the payment services act in Singapore.

Payment providers have to be ready to fight money laundering in advance. They should build money laundering prevention systems to combat fraud. Also, all the customers need to go through identity verification.

Low-risk customers need to go through simple due diligence, but customers with high risk have to go through enhanced due diligence. Other methods of risk prevention include Watchlist screening, transaction monitoring, and recording and reporting of transactions that seem suspicious.

There’s one more regulation that payment companies operating in Singapore have to follow. The regulation is known as Financial Services and Markets Bill also called FSM Bill.

The goal of the FSM bill is to minimize the risks by licensing the payment service providers and imposing AML/CFT requirements.

State of FinTech Industry in Singapore

Even though the population of Singapore is just 5.9 million, it has 132 banks. Plus, there’s a boom in the FinTech industry in Singapore. In 2021, the investments in the FinTech market rose by 37%. Moreover, the total amount invested in 2021 left China and India behind.

Singapore is a great platform for companies that want to gain a firm footing. Plus, it can be the perfect place to expand service globally. Singapore is working towards Crypto adoption, which will only boost the financial situation of the country. Currently, the financial environment is highly secure because of the KYC requirements in Singapore.

Tags kyc guidelines singapore, kyc regulations singapore, kyc requirements in singapore, payment services act in singapore, singapore digital identity system, singapore kyc requirements

DIRO for a Faster Customer Onboarding Process

Post author By Ady
Post date August 8, 2022
Categories Onboarding

how to secure customer onboarding process

How you handle customer onboarding sets the tone for your partnership with the customer. Potential customers will drop the process if you have a clunky and slow onboarding process. This is why it is important for businesses to carefully build a robust customer onboarding process. It does more than offer a good customer experience, it helps in boosting revenue, security, and more.

Customers are a crucial part of any business, so it makes sense that their onboarding process should be as smooth as possible. If your customer doesn’t like the way you’re handling the onboarding process, they’ll soon lose interest in your product/service.

DIRO is an emerging business that aims to improve every single part of the customer onboarding process. With a range of use cases and services, DIRO can add speed, security, and efficiency to the customer onboarding process.

Why is the Customer Onboarding Process Important?

Before you understand how DIRO can streamline your customer onboarding process, you need to understand why the process is crucial.

Any business needs a steady number of customers coming in each month to survive. If they have a poor customer onboarding process, they’ll lose more than half of their potential customers.

Consumers of today want seamless experiences and fast results. If a customer has to wait for minutes just for a contact form to open up, they’ll abandon the process altogether.

So, to generate revenue, and boost the brand reputation, businesses need to build every part of the onboarding process carefully.

Build a Customer Onboarding Plan

It becomes easy to build an onboarding process when you know what the end goal is. While keeping this goal in mind, start developing a process in your mind. All your efforts should be dedicated to fulfilling that goal.

In most cases, the goal is to onboard a new customer and get them to use your service. Businesses can build an effective customer onboarding process by breaking the process into smaller processes:

1. Choose a Demographic

This is a step that a lot of businesses skip, or overlook. Understanding this part is crucial for developing a customer onboarding plan. The truth is that not everyone wants your service, so there’s no point in casting a wide net.

You want customers who need your service. So, choose a demographic or a series of demographics where you want to promote your services. A demographic also means targeting the right age group.

2. Understand the Market

If you don’t have an understanding of your market, your business will never succeed. Understand the ups and downs of the market and then build customer onboarding strategies. Not every market is suitable for your product, and you should know it.

3. Give Value Proposition

Once your product/service is out in the market. You need to start sharing the value that the product is offering. You’ve already completed the toughest task if you can tell your customers why they should jump onto your product/service.

4. Communicate Well

After you’ve finally onboarded a customer, you need to keep in touch with them. Staying in touch with customers serves two purposes, the first one is providing feedback regarding the product, and the second one is providing ideal customer service.

5. Stay Relevant

The world of technologies is ever-changing, there are always some changes. So, as a business, you should always try to keep up with new technologies. Especially the ones that can enhance the customer experience. Staying relevant is a great way to onboard new customers and retain old ones.

How DIRO Makes Customer Onboarding Easier?

Although customer onboarding remains an ever-prevalent challenge for most businesses, it can be streamlined a little with the right technologies.

Currently, the biggest challenge companies face while onboarding customers is verifying documents. There are not too many ways to verify if documents presented by customers are legit or not. This becomes a major concern for businesses under the financial industry umbrella.

So, DIRO helps businesses of all kinds in verifying online customer documents with global coverage. Verify bank accounts, proof of address documents, utility bills, KYC, and KYB documents, and others to streamline the onboarding process.

DIRO can verify over 9,000 document types instantly by verifying documents directly from the issuing source. DIRO can boost the overall customer experience by reducing the time taken in document verification during onboarding.

You can contact us today if you’re interested in learning how DIRO can help you make the customer onboarding process faster. Moreover, DIRO online document verification can reduce the risk of onboarding fraudsters. As DIRO eliminates the use of fake and stolen customer documents by 100%.

Tags customer onboarding plan, customer onboarding process, why customer onboarding is important

4 Best Ways to Protect Your Vendors’ from Being Attacked by a Cybercriminal

Post author By Ady
Post date August 5, 2022
Categories Business

In the public landscape, vendor bank account fraud is growing at an alarming rate. A vendor contacts the accounts team to tell them they haven’t received the payment. The accounts team then checks the data and finds out that they’ve paid the invoices. So, when more due diligence is done, it is found out that the money wasn’t sent to the Vendor’s account but to some other account altogether. What happened was that a fraudster got into the systems and changed the Vendor’s bank account information.

This situation has happened a lot in recent times. Most recently it happened with Scott County Schools where they lost $3.7M. Eventually, they were able to recover the funds. And they decided to put some safeguards to prevent something like this from happening again.

Another similar situation happened in the “City of El Paso, TX” where they uncovered $2.9M, and $300K payments were sent to a fraudster. Unfortunately, they were only able to recover $1.6M and $292K from the payments. To prevent this from happening again, they decided to verify vendor information before every single payment.

Regardless of the fact your company has been in a similar situation or not, there are 4 basic steps you can follow to prevent fraudsters from changing banking information.

Prevent Vendor Bank Account Fraud

1. Build Custom Vendor Banking Forms

The first and foremost thing you should do is to build a banking form for all the vendors. The reason for doing so are:

Don’t accept banking information in an email body. An email with banking details doesn’t provide authentication so that’s why you build the form.
Change the form every year. This way your team can distinguish between fake and real forms. If they receive an old form, they can ask the vendor if there’s a mistake.
Add vendor authentication on the form. Existing vendors will have to add some kind of information that’s unique to them. No one except the vendor should have that information as it helps in reducing the risk of fraud
Your form should require a digital signature. Be careful while building a PDF form with a digital signature built into the form. To avoid emails and calls from vendors saying they’re facing errors, let the vendors use their own digital signature tool.

2. Verify Bank Information

This is a vital step in preventing vendor bank account fraud. As you confirm a vendor’s Legal Name and Tax ID to match IRS records, you should also confirm the bank account information to match them against your records. Moreover, you can use DIRO’s bank account verification service to make sure the documents provided by your vendor are true.

3. Contact Vendor to Confirm Information Change

Once you’ve received the updated form, and confirmed all the data against your records, it’s time to contact the vendor. Call the vendor to verify the changes if there are any. This may seem cumbersome to both parties at first, but the benefits outweigh the pain. There won’t be any payment delays, and you won’t have to try to recover lost money.

While verifying the information, keep in mind that the vendors may not respond right away, so you need to find a way to keep track. If the Vendors don’t respond in time, don’t process the payment.

4. Send Notification to Vendor After Information Change

If there are any changes in the vendor banking information, you should build a system that sends an automatic notification system. Whenever the information is changed, the vendor will receive a notification.

How to Make This Process Efficient?

Building and setting up this process takes up a lot of time. But the process is crucial as it helps vendors and yourself be safe from fraudsters. Implement a vendor self-registration portal for vendors to authenticate themselves and prevent fraud. On the portal, vendors can authenticate themselves and also update their banking information as per their preference.

Money Laundering and Wash Trading in NFT – Taking a Deeper Look

Post author By Ady
Post date August 1, 2022
Categories AML

Wash trading is becoming common practice for a number of reasons. The trader or company may be trying to promote buying to raise prices, or to get people to sell at lower prices. The real reason is that the trader wants a tax refund whenever they engage in wash trading. This helps them in collecting capital so they can perform the same activities over and over again.

Understanding Crypto Wash Trading

In layman’s terms, Wash trading is done to trick and mislead traders, investors, and collectors about the true value and liquidity of a coin or NFT. Any trader or investor that does wash trading buys and sells the same asset over and over again.

Wash trading is impacting the market in the favor of the NFT owner/developer as it changes the actual value of the account. Wash trading requires the trader to quickly purchase and sell an asset in a short time period. Usually, one or more collaborating agents make multiple deals without any account of market risk. This makes the initial position of hostile agents the same as before.

On the Ethereum Blockchain, “Cryptopunks, a Larva Labs NFT Project”, went through a wash sale in October 2021. CryptoPunk 9998, crypto was sold for 123,457 ETH.

This was not just a flash loan, but it was an example of NFT money laundering.

How Does Wash Trade Work?

The Constant buying and selling of a crypto coin or NFT are known as wash trading. The concept of Wash Traders goes one step beyond, and it also considers the investor’s goal and outcome of the transaction into consideration.

Investors or traders that buy and sell assets with a common benefit in a short time period are engaging in wash trading. Traders across accounts with the same Beneficial Owner are a concern for financial regulators as they may be involved in money laundering.

To trick regulatory bodies and manipulate the market, some wash traders don’t include any actual transactions. Wash trading can also happen when traders pretend to buy the assets without any money being exchanged.

Why Is Wash Trading Forbidden?

In traditional financing, wash trading is considered illegal and forbidden. When it comes to the decentralized NFTs, whether Wash trading is illegal or not is not defined yet.

Even though there are no rules and regulations in the world of NFTs, several governments have established oppressing rules. For example, a South Korean crypto exchange “Bithumb” was charged by the government for promoting the wash trade. This trade was worth more than $250 million back in 2018.

While crypto wash trading isn’t considered illegal in some countries, it is a challenge to figure out the offenders. This is due to the decentralized nature of the crypto and the NFT industry. Due to the anonymous nature of coins and NFTs, they can be purchased and sold repeatedly. This increases the risk of wash trading and money laundering.

The risk is increased with fake prices and fake volume data. There’s no way for legit traders to uncover valid data until regulatory bodies in which countries or regions overseeing particular assets get involved. This is completely different from traditional financial trading assets such as equities, which are backed by customer verification protocols.

Role of NFTs in the Money Laundering Process

Money laundering is a huge concern when it comes to art trading. As NFTs are anonymous, many people question if NFTs can be used for money laundering. So, the question arises, can NFTs be used for money laundering?

The answer is Yes. Developers and scammers are using NFTs to launder money. As NFTs have an advantage over traditional banking methods, there is a lot of use of crypto assets for money laundering.

As it’s difficult to quantify money laundering in the worth of physical art, NFTs don’t have that problem. NFTs provide a better idea of how much money is being laundered. Recently, most NFT marketplaces have become a hub for money laundering.

Why does Wash Trading Affect the NFT Market?

The reason is simple: traders use less liquid NFTs to affect an asset’s price. NFT Wash trading is a major issue for legit investors, the general public, and collectors.

As investors have to rely on quantifiable data to make a decision, most of them end up making the wrong choices. Specialists have to look at data changes to promote NFT Investments and prevent the Wash trading scams. The NFT community is most riddled with scammers. Wash trading is becoming a common practice that regulators can use to fight the decentralized nature of the Crypto space.

Due to wash trading, traders and investors are unable to make smart and informed decisions about their purchases. So, is there a way to identify wash trading in the NFT market?

When new coins are released in the market, they’re completely fresh and have no old data. Thus, developers and insiders may perform wash trading to boost the value of the coin. So, it’s better to stay away from such digital assets.

When it comes to NFTs, limited NFTs have investor interest or trading activities. So, the NFT owners get into wash trading to entice new traders to buy the NFT at an enormous cost.

To not fall prey to wash trading scams, a trader should always focus on established crypto with higher volume. Scammers need more money to effectively manipulate the market. So, avoiding new currencies can prevent them from doing so.

Tags crypto wash trading, how does wash trading work, wash trading in nft, what is wash trading

Micro Deposit Verification for Bank Accounts – Alternatives to Micro Deposit Verification

Post author By Ady
Post date July 26, 2022
Categories Bank

alternatives for micro deposit verification

Micro deposits are the legacy system for the verification of customer bank accounts. As far as customers could remember, banks have been using micro deposit verification to verify bank account ownership. But being one of the oldest and most used methods doesn’t mean that it’s the perfect solution. There are some flaws in the micro deposit bank account verification process.

Micro deposits are two small test deposits that are sent from one bank to another one. The idea is that it helps in verifying second account ownership information.

The micro deposit bank account verification process can easily take up to 5 business days as the transactions go through the ACH Network. In a world where consumers want instant process completion, waiting for 5 days can increase the abandonment process.

Why Micro-Deposit Account Verification Is Used for Account Verification?

The current banking infrastructure is decades old, and it takes a lot of time and money to upgrade. Since the beginning, the account verification process revolves around micro deposit verification.

In 2018, the National Automation Clearing House Association (NACHA) completed 23B micro deposit transactions with a value of $51.2T. While the ACH Network proves to be a very cost-effective method for completing these transactions, it has lacked immediacy since always.

While NACHA also launched same-day ACH payments all the way back in 2015, the adoption of same-day payments for micro-deposits remains low. NACHA has commented about an API-based, real-time verification approach, but no significant improvement has been made.

Similarly, a huge range of mobile and online banking suites are available to banks and credit unions are also reliant on micro deposit verification. Regardless of the scale of the service, or how new it is, most businesses still tend to rely on micro deposit bank verification.

Flaws in Micro-Deposit Verification Process

Banks and credit unions should follow the steps of modern-day e-commerce companies. Customer experience in the web 2.0 era is all about fast experience. Customers aren’t willing to wait days for basic processes to be approved. In the eCommerce industry, any delay in payments can lead to account cart abandonment.

In the banking sector, every 10 seconds that are added to the customer onboarding process increases 5% the risk of application abandonment.

So, the best way for banks to move forward is to increase their conversion rates and improve the rate of customer acquisition. This can be done using automation, and other technologies for the onboarding and account verification process.

Bank Account Verification Best Practices

Financial institutions that want to verify bank account information should find some better ways. If micro-deposits are a widely used method, banks should renounce it if it increases the chances of application abandonment. Here are the two best replacements for micro-deposit bank account verification:

1. Instant Account Verification (IAV)

It’s important to include customers in the verification process to boost relationships, but banks should do it with the help of more seamless technologies. Instant account verification doesn’t rely on two small deposits to the customer accounts. And, as the name suggests, the process is instant.

2. Real-Time Account Transaction Monitoring

The biggest challenge banks face while moving on from micro deposit verification is that they can’t access their own data.

Banks and credit unions have data that when used correctly can predict fraud before it happens. More than often, all of this data is hidden beneath a bank’s core systems, or is only available on a batch basis. There are technologies out there that can help banks access this transactional data, which helps in verifying bank accounts and predicting fraud.

Conclusion: Customers Demand Real-Time Verification

Micro deposits helped banks and financial institutions a lot in the past. But customers of today prefer faster resolution times and friction-proof validation. So, for banks to provide an ideal customer experience, there’s a heavy need for micro deposit verification alternatives.

Tags alternatives for micro deposit verification, flaws in micro-deposit verification process, micro deposit verification

Rise of Open Banking – New Innovations for Small and Medium Sized Businesses

Post author By Ady
Post date July 22, 2022
Categories Bank

Small businesses of today aren’t like the old days, limited to a particular market. Today’s small to medium-sized businesses (SMB) are evolving and leveraging emerging technologies to keep up with the giants. While some businesses are still stuck with old and traditional methods for customer acquisition, capital access, and more. Businesses using digital apps and services have a clear advantage.

More and more consumers are now using open banking-powered solutions to handle their finances, save time, and save money. So, it makes sense for SMBs to also jump on the open banking bandwagon. This helps SMBs to cater to consumers’ needs and understand their demands. In this increasingly digital world, any SMB that’s capable of providing a unique yet tailored customer experience wins the race.

The crisis brought forth by the pandemic in the last two years has forced SMBs to ride the financial technology wave. A study conducted by Mastercard named the Rise of Open Banking, highlighted the rising costs and newer methods for customer acquisition and other important factors for SMBs.

The new and easier access to technology has led to an encouraging trend, SMB owners have been quick to adopt digital tools to fund, manage, and promote businesses. According to a finding in Mastercard’s study, 9 out of 10 small business owners consider themselves heavy FinTech users. Their use is both personal and commercial.

Some other important pointers from the research include:

80% of SMB owners started using digital channels for loan applications in the last 2 years.
84% claim that technologies make them feel better while applying for loans.
64% have received some kind of business loan using digital means.

The adoption of digital channels is higher than consumer numbers. SMB owners need to generate enough business to stay afloat so they’re more than happy to adopt technologies. They’re accustomed to adopting market conditions.

Digital Transformation is Solving SMB Challenges

The Covid-19 pandemic forced businesses all over the globe on how they operate. Banking, finance, investing, savings, and several other parts of the financial industry have gone digital. Technologies are changing how businesses conduct their day-to-day activities.

Doing businesses from home or while traveling has become super easy. Small business owners are taking advantage of every possible beneficial technology available to them. They’re also one of the most FinTech-heavy businesses, regardless of the industry.

While business owners are learning how to adapt and adjust to uncertain and changing regulations. Some concerns that every SMB owner has in their mind are:

1. Inflation

The rising costs of almost everything are the first and foremost concern for small business owners. With this year’s record-breaking price hikes, businesses have to find new solutions to cut down costs and remain profitable. 47% of owners claim that rising costs are their biggest concern. Consumer-focused industries such as restaurants, and retail have it even tougher to stay profitable.

2. New Customer Acquisition

39% of SMB owners say that acquiring new customers is the biggest pain point. Professional services businesses were more urgent about new customers. 49% of SMB owners say that finding new customers is their day-to-day concern.

3. Hiring Skilled Employees

Pandemic-related challenges quickly changed the employment landscape quickly and drastically. 35% of all employers are having trouble finding skilled employees in this new landscape of hiring.

4. Managing Operations

27% of owners said that efficient tools and systems to manage operations are one of the biggest challenges for them.

Open Banking Innovations – Improving Speed, Efficiency, and Personalization

Over 80% of SMB owners want faster, easier access to capital. This is why they’re more than ready to partner with FinTech for customized, and agile funding solutions. Almost all SMB owners heavily rely on credit cards, and 81% of owners are interested in business loans that meet their requirements perfectly. Over 60% of small business owners require loans to keep surviving in the market.

Faster payments are also something that SMB owners look forward to. To streamline the payment processing experience for customers, Small business owners use Open banking tools. They leverage digital wallets, cryptocurrency, and other FinTech tools.

Connecting accounts to manage businesses’ finances provides the opportunity to give personalized insights. It also adds convenience for SMB owners wanting to streamline the way to handle business operations such as banking, invoicing, managing cash flow, and paying bills.

SMB Open Banking Adoption is Going Strong

SMB owners are using open banking innovations to better handle their finances. By integrating open banking into their operations, they’re creating a smoother, and easier-to-handle workflow.

Open banking can streamline linking accounts, payment processing, customer onboarding, bank account verification, and other parts of a business.

Owners are linking their financial accounts with open banking solutions to gain a competitive edge above their competitors. 85% of SMB owners are looking for solutions that can be customized according to their business needs.

Feeding intelligent, and quality data in financial management tools is giving businesses the edge they need for growing in this changing environment. Paying and getting paid becomes faster and more efficient.

Tags impact of open banking on smes

How does Bank Data Validation Process Work?

Post author By Ady
Post date July 19, 2022
Categories Bank

Now that the financial industry has completely embraced technologies into their processes, it’s important for them to make sure that payments are error-proof. Customers make mistakes. Instead of trying to teach customers the right way, banks should employ a bank data validation tool. Banks should try to make every part of a customer’s journey as seamless as possible. This also includes smoothing out the transactions.

Another added benefit of doing so is that it helps in preventing fraudulent activities. When banks verify bank account information before every transaction, it reduces the risk of fraudulent payments going through. It goes without saying, bank data validation is crucial.

But what exactly is “Bank Data Validation?” In this article, we will shed some light on the bank data validation process and how it helps out banks and customers.

What is Bank Data Validation?

A lot of consumers confuse bank data validation and bank data verification processes. While they may sound the same, the processes are slightly different. Bank account data verification means verifying the input information against the information present in the database. Data validation on the other hand involves an algorithm-based process.

In simple words, it means that payment details are checked using a series of data and information. This allows the system to understand whether an account exists or not based on the numbers.

Moreover, this process is instant during payments, meaning customers don’t have to wait. Merchants can instantly verify the details and correct any errors that pop up. Bank data validation offers a number of benefits:

Reduces the risk of payment errors/failures
Eliminates the need of inputting bank details over and over again
Uncovers and prevents fraudulent transactions

What is Bank Data Validation Automation?

Now that you have a fair understanding of how the bank data validation process works, let’s discuss how banks can implement it. The process of implementation is super easy for merchants. There are endless online solutions that will gladly help you implement the solution. You can ask them to install the solution and then automate the bank validation on the input of payment information.

There are a lot of bank data validation solutions out there, it’s easy to choose one based on your needs.

The process itself is pretty difficult, and it requires a deep understanding of data structures. Basically, the third-party services simultaneously check if the account information is correct and if the account can make the payments.

With access to this information, banks can decide whether to authorize the payments or not. Additionally, the bank data validation solution can also be used to access other data such as Bank Identifier Code (BIC), IBAN, and other information.

Advantages of Using a Bank Data Validation Solution

There are a number of benefits of implementing a bank data validation solution. Banks of today need to provide a smooth experience to the customers, so technological integration is important. A bank data validation solution can help your business by:

Avoid Payment Delays

When you have a process in place that verifies bank information before payment, you can get rid of unwanted payment delays. Any incorrect information that a customer adds will be instantly identified. Customers won’t have to re-enter information once the payment fails.

Eliminate Fraud & Multiple Tries

If a transaction is authorized without verifying the details, it can be expensive to rectify the information. So, the best way to move forward is by identifying information firsthand. It can also reduce the risk of fraudulent payments being authorized.

Valid Payments

It helps in confirming if the payments are valid or not before they are processed. This leads to improved customer satisfaction. Customers get annoyed if they have to re-enter the same information. When information is verified firsthand before the payment, customers get a sense of security in the institution.

Simply put, bank data validation is an essential tool for increasingly modern banking. It improves customer satisfaction, and also reduces the headaches for the bank’s payment processing team.

Tags advantages of bank data validation solution, bank data validation, bank data validation automation, bank data validation process, bank data validation tool, what is bank data validation

Why Open Banking for Income Verification?

Post author By Ady
Post date July 15, 2022
Categories Bank

Going through a loan application process is one of the most daunting things you can go through. Whether you’re looking forward to buying a home, or automobile or have to go through a mortgage lending process, you have to sit through this process. The biggest part of the loan approval process is income verification.

It can take a lot of time and involves a huge number of paperwork. If you have all the right documents stored in a particular place, then you can use them to complete the process fast. But, if you have your documents scattered all over, then the process becomes frustrating.

Here’s how open banking can help in the income verification process for lending.

Common Documents Used for Income Verification Process?

Paystubs are one of the most common documents that are used to verify a person’s income. It serves two purposes, it can help in completing income and employment verification. With a paycheck that’s traceable back to the employer, a lender can easily figure out what kind of income that’s coming in. They can also follow up with the employer to verify the information provided by the lender.

Other income documents include proof-of-income letters, the standard W-2 annual tax statement can also work. Other tax forms may be more fragmented. Unfortunately, these documents aren’t available all the time. While they can be easily obtained from your organization’s payroll providers and tax filing software, they still require a significant amount of hassle for both the borrower and the lender.

Moreover, processing that kind of paperwork, following up with the employers, and verifying the details is time-intensive, and thus money-consuming.

How Open Banking Improves Mortgage Lending?

Mortgages are one of the biggest loans that consumers have to take in their life. This is also why the mortgage application process is complex. According to a survey, the biggest reason why people hesitate to get a home loan is that they’ll have to go through the loan application process.

Mortgage credit decisions end up falling on the borrower’s ability to make the payments on time. Almost all mortgage lenders ask for at least 2 years’ worth of income and employment verification history. This happens using tax documents, pay stubs, and asset management. The same goes for self-employed borrowers.

The recently launched MasterCard open banking platform is able to leverage open banking data to cover all the strict guidelines for high-value loans. This helps in easing the income verification process for both parties.

How Can Renters Benefit from Open Banking?

Homeownership isn’t suitable for every person, and open banking makes the elimination process easier for banks. Landlords screening for potential tenants can also leverage open banking data to make smarter and informed decisions much quicker. It can also be used to give context to low credit scores. There are other red flags that can also be uncovered using open banking. This also leads to a simpler and fairer decision-making process.

When do Auto Loans Require Income Verification?

Auto loans don’t generally ask for income and employment documents, but they may ask for them whenever a borrower has a low credit score. The same goes for credit cards, personal loans, and other payment sectors.

For low credit score borrowers, just checking the credit score doesn’t tell the whole story. It can lead to frustrating denials, even though they have evidence of qualifying income and they pay bills on time.

By incorporating income and other data, like transactions from connected bank accounts, debt-to-income ratio, and more. Borrowers can be approved for their car loans and qualify for lower interest rates. Lenders, on the other hand, won’t miss out on onboarding new customers with a simple income and employment verification process.

How does Income Data Lead to Personal Lending Decisions?

For many personal lenders, verifying income history may not be the best way to approve loans. With open finance, income data, transaction data, and other financial data can be incorporated into their lending algorithms.

Personal lenders of all types can look at multiple types of data, based on how much they’re lending and what the money is being used for. The open banking landscape provides highly customized data, straight from the applicant’s bank accounts. This leads to better decision models.

They no longer have to be satisfied with the submitted documents. By accessing consumer-permissioned data anytime, lenders can get a complete view of a customer’s financial health and bank account data.

How Does Open Banking Income Verification Help Consumers?

Verifying a customer’s income with data permission by consumers allows lenders and FinTech developers to streamline the customer experience during the loan application. Moreover, it offers better choices to consumers.

Open banking provides access to data that’s needed to verify income quickly, securely, and without manual effort. It is the best solution to improve lending and mortgage processes.

Tags income verification process, open banking for income verification, open banking income verification

Basic Mistakes in ID Verification Process

Post author By Ady
Post date July 13, 2022
Categories Identity

Now that the financial industry is on the wave of digitization, the lives of consumers are changing. With the rise of digital banking, and cloud-based financial services, the number of data breaches also grew. 2016 reached a record of 35 breaches every second. 64% of these data breaches were successful, and they stole users’ personal information like social security numbers, banking information, date of birth, and even medical records.

The threat of Identity fraud is at an all-time high and it causes major financial losses. The biggest identity theft scam of recent times included Alberto Companioni and Patricia Perez-Gonzalez. Together, they ran a 2-year long credit card and ID theft scheme all across the United States. This scheme resulted in a loss of about $2 million in fraud.

In April 2016, 48 people were accused of setting up fraudulent bank accounts, and withdrawing over $500,000 in stolen cash at Atlantic City Casinos.”

Based on these two situations, and countless others it’s safe to assume that the situation of ID theft is becoming more serious. More and more people are becoming the target of ID theft and how it can harm them if they’re not careful. The numbers revolving around Identity theft are rising, and fraudsters are using newer technologies to trick financial institutions.

Financial institutions have to protect themselves and their customers from these situations. This is why it’s essential to follow through on identity verification methods.

Why are Manual ID Checks Failing?

Advising your customers to follow basic safety practices to protect their identities is useful, but it’s not enough. Let’s say a customer faces an ID theft issue, by the time they face this problem, it’s too late. The fraud has happened already, and the customer has already lost the money. Customers have to sit through the time-consuming processes of reporting. Customers who face a lot of trouble end up switching banks or companies for better security.

To fight this problem of Identity theft with a high success rate, the problem needs to be stopped at its root cause. Banks of all kinds rely on employees to manually verify customer identities, and then they conduct background checks using the ID data.

The first step of the manual ID verification process isn’t effective in fraud prevention. As there’s a human element involved, it is highly susceptible to human error.

Flaws of Manual ID Verification Processes

Fraudsters of today love the technologies. They leverage endless technologies to their benefit. The manual ID verification process can’t find the flaw in fraudster-generated information. The manual ID verification process is flawed in this digitally fueled environment. Here are the 6 main weaknesses of the manual ID verification process:

1. Prone to Error

Every state has its type of ID proof, and every government tends to make some changes in the ID proof as well. These small changes and the number of ID proofs already make it challenging to find a fake document among 10 real ones. So, manually verifying identities is already a tough challenge.

On top of that, changing rules and regulations have a lot of states reissuing their ID documents in 2017. It’s almost impossible for bank employees to keep up with all the latest changes. This makes it easier for fraudsters to pass a fake document as the original.

2. Inconvenient

As banks are working around the clock to offer more and more services digitally, the manual ID verification process is becoming inconvenient. New operations and new technologies are taking time to be fully integrated into the processes.

3. Susceptible to Fraud

As branch employees gather personal information directly from the consumers during the ID verification process. It opens them up to situations where branch employees can exploit this data for their gain.

4. Time-Consuming

The current method of manual onboarding makes customers frustrated. We live in an age where customers demand instant results, and they end up dropping the whole process. Having to wait for the information to be entered into the system, and then waiting for the information to be verified gets annoying.

5. Inconsistent

Banks cannot implement a manual ID verification process across all branches at the same level. The overhead cost of documentation and filing the paperwork is exhausting. Plus, it’s hard to keep track of old information, as employees have to shuffle through a deck of information.

6. Outdated

Most important of all, the manual ID verification process is outdated. Digital driver’s licenses are a new technology that can change the need for manual verification. In manual ID verification, there’s no way to verify if the information is outdated or up-to-date.

Conclusion: Manual ID Verification Process

Financial institutions with an inadequate identity verification process may have to suffer hefty losses. Identity theft and data breaches can happen frequently if a bank isn’t careful about who they onboard. Most importantly, banks with lacking processes can end up paying huge fines for non-compliance with KYC and KYB laws. All in all, the need for technological advancement in the identity verification process is crucial for banks.

Tags flaws in manual id verification process, flaws in manual identity verification process