Preventing fraud with postal validation in 2023 is possible now. If you want to learn exactly how to do that, keep reading this article. Let’s dive in!
There are several negative ways in which fraud affects enterprises. Fraud is a financial and logistical headache for organizations because it wastes time and money. The reputation and relationships of a business may be harmed by fraud to varying degrees.
Fraud hurts not only businesses but also the people who buy from them. Identity theft, which may have long-lasting monetary ramifications for victims, is a prime example of why this is so important. Customers of fraud-affected companies may lose trust in the company regardless of whether or not they have had their identities stolen.
All of this may be avoided if businesses take precautions to prevent fraud from occurring in the first place. There are many methods for doing so, but one is postal validation. PAV protects companies and consumers against fraud, whether alone or in conjunction with other strategies.
Methods of Postal Validation
Standardization, rectification, and validation are the three stages of postal validation used to guarantee that a set of addresses is legitimate and in use. With the help of the supplementary information provided by postal validation APIs, businesses can readily distinguish genuine addresses from imposters. Identity theft is avoided, and inaccurate client data is exposed thanks to this measure.
- By updating addresses to conform to USPS guidelines, standardization ensures they are properly formatted and delivered to their intended recipients.
- Address errors are found and corrected by consulting the most up-to-date USPS address database and applying the appropriate changes. This process will detect any incorrect data entered by the user and attempt to fix it.
- Addresses are verified as current, genuine, and deliverable by comparison with the official USPS database.
The process of verifying an address consists of the following three phases. While these features are important, they are not the only ones in PAV that might deter fraud. Other factors that may aid in consumer and company safety are:
- According to geolocation data, addresses may be classified as rural businesses or urban residences.
- Businesses may use programs like LACSLink Processing and USPS SuiteLINK to update outdated suite information, including rural route addresses.
These systems will make postal validation and fraud prevention a breeze for businesses. This way, companies know they are providing service to the right people at the right addresses. This is particularly crucial for medical, financial, and shipping-related organizations that handle confidential information.
Postal validation is useful for preventing fraud
There are a few instances when an address may be used fraudulently. There’s a chance that the addresses are completely made up, that they’re real but belong to someone else, or that they’re old and associated with fake client data. Nearly every step in the aforementioned postal validation procedure may be exploited to thwart fraudulent activity:
- Since this initial stage merely formats according to USPS standards rather than verifying it to a current database, fraudulent addresses may make it through. Despite this, standardization is an important part of the postal validation process since it is a benchmark against which subsequent processes may be judged.
- When doing address correction, standard addresses are checked against the USPS database to identify and eliminate fictitious addresses. Unfortunately, fake addresses cannot pass this test, although stolen or out-of-date ones could.
- Addresses that have been updated and standardized must be validated to ensure they match the most current USPS database.
- Any addresses that don’t match after the rectification procedure are reported and the company is notified if they don’t match after another run.
- The geolocation information retrieved from each address is always current and may be cross-referenced with what was initially supplied with the address. More recent data improves a company’s ability to serve clients, particularly if the company offers personalized services or goods.
- Integrated resources – LACSLink Processing and USPS SuiteLINK, like geolocation data, guarantee that a company always has the most up-to-date information on each address.
Customer data that has been tampered with will be promptly deleted. By the end of it, old addresses will be corrected.
In order to avoid having several addresses for the same user, addresses might be cross-referenced with other client data. Companies may use the same thing to determine whether numerous consumers have the same address.
Moreover, addresses may be utilized as a component of multi-factor authentication to confirm a customer’s identity. Postal validation is an alternative to entering a password or SMS code. Any address that has been stolen may now be traced. This safeguards them and offers more protection than just using a password.