Open banking’s potential has been tapped into by the global payment juggernaut, Mastercard. Using the technology, it has announced the launch of its European-based Account Owner Verification solution. This solution will instantly verify people are who they say they are.
People are always looking for ways, new or old, to ensure their finances and financial data are safe. Mastercard has recognised this is a top priority in the payment experience. It, therefore, launched its solution to ensure data security through open banking. Consequently, users are given more choice as to whether they want to share their financial data. In turn, they receive a greater service from the company. All the while, Mastercard remains committed to embracing new networks and bolstering its open banking services.
Secure digital onboarding
Mastercard’s Account Owner Verification service automates, strengthens, and simplifies how businesses across markets and industries can verify customer bank account ownership. This launch is made all the more significant when the importance of digital bank account verification in the modern world is taken into account.
“With Account Owner Verification, we initiate an important step in Europe. This is a crucial step towards helping our customers across the ecosystem save time and money. We are helping them through a fast, secure and reliable account verification process. This open banking product innovation gives consumers the power to use their data in new and secure ways to transact through a seamless experience,” says Jess Turner, EVP, global open banking and API, Mastercard.
Mastercard’s solution enables instant verification of bank account ownership based on the company’s European open banking connectivity.
The strength of a match between the name submitted for verification and the name held on file by the end user’s financial institution dictates the score provided by the solution. This in turn denotes if there is a bad actor or not.
The solution can be used to solve pain points in account opening. Espeically when adding payment credentials and direct debit origination for players. Some examples include:
- Digital wallets providers
- PSPs
- Wealth management apps
- Property technology platforms
- Insurance companies
- E-commerce players
Partnering with European leader in credit scoring
In addition to this new product innovation, Mastercard has initiated a new partnership with France-based open banking credit decisioning specialist, Algoan. This partnership will help accelerate financial inclusion across new European markets, starting in the Western European region.
“Open banking data is a powerful tool to deliver better, faster, and more inclusive credit decisioning. We continue to focus on increasing our growing list of partners to deliver local market knowledge. Our goa is to feature rich tools that further accelerate open banking adoption. We are pleased to announce our strategic partnership with Algoan to support our ambitions across Europe,” says Bart Willaert, EVP open banking international markets, Mastercard.
Already capitalising on the benefits of open banking to ensure its credit decisioning tools can support lenders, Algoan will further enhance its service with the Mastercard partnership. It will use Mastercard’s open banking connectivity to empower its Credit Insights, Credit Score and Payment Score products, alongside categorisation feature.
“Partnering with Mastercard is a great testimony to the journey we’ve been on for the past five years. We’re excited that our ambition of making credit more accessible and more responsible is shared by Mastercard. This truly marks the beginning of a great collaboration which will further accelerate our growth across Europe and beyond”, says Michael Diguet, CEO and co-founder of Algoan.
