Bank Account Verification
Introduction to AVS - Bank Account Verification
The Realtime Account (holder) Verification Service (AVS-R) is a function that allows for the verification of an ID number and bank account number of an individual or a business, corresponding with the relevant account details stored within a bank’s database.
The leading South African banks currently provide this service, in some form, to their respective clients. Datanamix provides a platform that allows for the verification of accounts across all participating banks, in a uniform process.
Why AVS?
The business use case for the account verification mechanism is two-fold. Firstly, businesses making payments into numerous bank accounts need to verify that the account to be credited belongs to the intended beneficiary; and secondly, institutions that are mandated to process debit order collections against the accounts of their customers have a need to verify, prior to submitting the debit order instruction, that the debtor is indeed the owner of the account to be debited.
The aim of AVS is to ensure the integrity of the current creditor/debtor database, as well as the accuracy of any future amendments and additions to it, in an effort to mitigate fraud.
AVS Benefits?
There are many benefits to using Datanamix's AVS service, from risk mitigation and compliance, to cost and time savings. See more benefits below:
- Proactive detection of possible fraud.
- Mitigation of risks associated with fraud, both financial and reputational.
- Reduction in the time required to vet new business.
- Cost reduction, due to the replacement of manual methods with automated ones.
- Enhanced integrity of stored data.
- Mitigation of risk of unpaid transactions.
- Reduced query administration.
- Legislative compliance.
Web Service: How it works
The customer submits an individual account verification request to Datanamix via a Web Services call. This request will be for the verification of account holder details to an account held at any of the multiple participating South African banks.
Datanamix then transmits the verification request to the respective banks for processing, identifying the issuing bank by the branch code accompanying each verification request.
The issuing bank processes the verification request and provides positive or negative responses on the fields queried.
Once processed, the verification result is sent to Datanamix by the issuing banks. Datanamix then arranges the data into the format originally received, and returns the response to the customer via Web Service.