Utility Bill Identity Verification for the 21st Century

Amy Hou  |  April 6, 2018   |  ID Verification  

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Welcome to the ID verification world of tomorrow.

Need a mortgage, or maybe a car loan? What about a personal or business credit line? Perhaps you’re looking for a place to stay for the weekend, or rental equipment for an upcoming event. Chances are you’re doing at least some of this shopping and borrowing online.

Lenders and facilitators in this space – from traditional finance firms, to pioneering online-only lenders like Quicken and Rocket Mortgage, to rental marketplaces like AirBnB and Sharegrid – understand the growing demand for online integration all too well. Consumers increasingly want the convenience of automated borrower approval, renting, and booking.

The anonymous nature of online transactions, however, exposes firms to increased risk. Few people would glue on a fake moustache, walk into a bank, and try to con their way into a fraudulent loan, but online lenders and listing services have seen their fair share of losses to fraud. Online ID verification walks a thin line between user friction and risk reduction, and good answers have been hard to come by.

Utility bills present a time-honored solution for identity verification. They have been used as proof of residence almost as long as major utility companies have existed, and for good reason: they’re easily accessible only to the property owner and provide a useful history of payment behavior.

Unfortunately, the infrastructure for utility bill identity verification remains stuck in the 20th century:

  • The user must manually hunt down a paper or PDF statement from their utility provider and submit it, potentially by mail.
  • An employee at the receiving end must then manually read and accurately extract information from the bill.
  • This data must then be processed to inform the firm’s decision-making.

In short, using paper bills for utility bill identity verification promises slow turnaround times and a high-friction experience for the user.

Fortunately, paper utility bills aren’t the only way to access utility data. Urjanet’s cloud-based system automates the process, retrieving customers’ digital utility statements directly from the provider and delivering the relevant information to you, securely, within minutes. Urjanet can capture all data pointsfrom utility invoices, including name, billing address, payment history, fees & charges, tariffs, and much more.

Technology is ready to bring your ID verification process into the 21st century. Are you?

Contact us today to find out.

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About Amy Hou

Amy Hou is a Marketing Manager at Urjanet, overseeing content and communications. She enjoys writing about the latest industry updates in sustainability, energy efficiency, and data innovation.


Tags   Identity & Fraud   |   Identity Verification   |   Technology   |   Urjanet   |   Utility Bills   |   Utility Data   |