International Validation Supports 77 countries And Territories World-Wide
READING, UK – Bottomline Technologies (NASDAQ: EPAY), a leading provider of cloud-based payment, invoice and banking solutions, today announced the extended international validation capabilities of V-Series, the technology platform that enables real-time validation and verification of bank account details to combat the threats of failed and fraudulent transactions.
This latest update enables V-Series to deliver comprehensive validation and conversion between International Bank Account Numbers (IBAN) and Domestic Account details. V-Series converts Domestic Accounts into the equivalent valid IBAN, minimizing customer disruption and avoiding costly payment repair fees.
V-Series supports international validation across 77 countries and territories, including the 33 SEPA countries and 29 IBAN-using countries.
“Under SEPA rules corporates must make all their bulk Euro payments in the ISO 20022 format including an IBAN and Bank Identifier Code (BIC) by February 2014,” explains Jim Conning, Director of Payments at Bottomline Technologies. “To be compliant with the new rules, organisations need to convert their existing employee, customer and supplier data from the old domestic format into the new ISO standard including an IBAN.”
“Worryingly, we are seeing many organisations using instructions generally available on the internet to carry out their domestic to IBAN conversions. With only a 75% accuracy rate, ‘DIY’ conversions are costly, as the Banks will charge corporates an un-capped fee to repair each and every incorrect IBAN,” says Conning.
Unlike the basic IBAN ISO check, which can still lead to payment failure, V-Series extracts the equivalent Domestic Account details and validates this against the industry standard data of the issuing country, ensuring compliance with bank rules for data validation as well as returning the BIC at the point of capture.
With V-Series, the data is validated at the domestic bank level, which picks up any rules that are unique and specific to individual countries. To date, many Banks have been repairing the data for their customers free of charge at branch level. However, with SEPA, the system requirements are different and corporates must present their data in the ISO 20022 standard with a correct IBAN.
Conning concludes, “It is important to bear in mind that international validation is not a SEPA specific issue, but applies to any IBAN country. By using an international validation platform, organisations are reassured that their international and cross-border payments have been correctly converted and validated to reduce operating costs, secure revenue and ensure better control over cash-flow.”
V-Series validates bank account and sort code details to ensure an account should exist, should be open and can accept automated payments. It also verifies UK accounts confirming that an account definitely exists, is open and bears a living account holder’s name, address and date of birth. Both validation and verification can be checked simultaneously at the point of data capture to enable real-time decision-making. This enables businesses to identify and correct anomalies at the very start of the customer acquisition journey, before the cost of retrospectively correcting errors spirals upwards and customer service suffers.
