Bank Account Owner Verification - Authenticate

Real-Time Account Ownership Validation

 

Overview

CSG Forte Authenticate service empowers merchants to seamlessly verify account ownership, reducing the risk of fraud, to collect and pay funds simply and reliably. This service will allow merchants to verify ownership of bank accounts, no matter if the owner is a person or a business.

Ownership Verification

Authenticate service consults Tier I and most of Tier II banks, and multiple local banks and credit unions data to verify First Name and Last Name or Business Name along with Bank Routing Number (TRN) and Account Number submitted vs. the actual ownership of a given account. The response indicates if the input element matches with the actual account data or not. Transactions that do not receive a definitive response (such as POS, CON or NEG) will not be billable.

Using Authenticate

Authenticate can be accessed via multiple CSG Forte services such as Rest API and AGI calls, and DEX. Here you can find detailed information on how to use Authenticate with each of Forte’s services:

  • REST API:

    An authenticate transaction can be created including the “action”=”authenticate” parameter in the body of a POST request to the /organizations/{organization_id}/transactions URI. Or the URI can create an Authenticate transaction by appending the authenticate action to the end of the URI: {{baseURI}}/organizations/org_{{organizationID}}/locations/loc_{{locationID}}/transactions/authenticate

    • To see more of REST API connection click here or check our Postman collection here

    • To see the detail of authenticate transactions in REST API click here

  • AGI:

    Authenticate transaction type code is 26/Authenticate which will allow merchants to verify the ownership of a bank account. This will require the additional field pg_transaction_subtype=authenticate

  • DEX:

    Verify Bank Account Ownership directly from dex by creating a Bank Account Owner Verification transaction.

    • To see more of DEX and authenticate in DEX Docs click here

    • Bank Account Owner Verification Tutorial here

Response Values

 

Use the following response fields to identify a full, partial or no match for account ownership verifications:

  • pg_preauth_result - The value in this field indicates if the inquiry fields match completely, conditionally, or not match the database. Potential values for this field include the following: POS, CON, NEG or UNK.

    • POSindicates a positive match from the authenticate service.

    • NEGindicates a negative match.

    • CON indicates a conditional or partial match.

    • UNK indicates that nothing is known about the account (for various reasons as not enough info or preauth errors).

  • pg_preauth_description - This field displays the exact description of the matching status. If it’s a match, a no match, or a conditional one, or if there is no info, or if the authentication failed.

  • pg_response_description - This field indicates the exact reason for the matching transactions.

 

CSG Forte returns the following values in the result and descriptions fields listed above:

 

Pg_preauth_result Preauth Description Pg response description Comments
POS P60: MATCH
A05 		BUSINESS NAME MATCH The business name or full name provided exactly or closely matches the database record.
FIRST & LAST NAME MATCH
OVERALL MATCH
CON P75: CONDITIONAL MATCH
A06 		PARTIAL MATCH The full name or business name conditionally (partially) matches the database record.
NEG P10: NO MATCH
U80 		NO MATCH The name(s) received in the inquiry (Authenticate) message do not match any of the name fields for the record. Or invalid account number or bad account.
UNK P50: NO INFO
N01 		NO INFO No identifying data is available in the database for the account provided.
P90: PREAUTH VENDOR UNAVAIL
U84 		AUTH TIME OUT Database is having problems or it’s down, entry not processed.
P91: PREAUTH VENDOR ERROR
U82 		PREAUTH ERROR The response is null or it’s a malformed response.
P91: PREAUTH VENDOR ERROR
U85 		AUTH ERROR An invalid account number was identified.

Use Cases

Authenticate allows merchants to verify bank account ownership to reduce fraud before initiating payouts or accepting payments.

  • Authenticate is a great tool since in many industries, companies have to satisfy regulatory obligations to verify account ownership.

  • If merchants need to send money to customers, Authenticate helps them to verify that the provided account is not only valid, but also belongs to the person or business claiming to own it.

  • Authenticate helps merchants to prevent human errors, and also protects merchants from malicious actors reducing the risk of loss.