ValidiFI and PDI Team to Streamline Pay-By-Bank Enrollment

Payment intelligence provider ValidiFI has teamed with fuel/convenience retail tech company PDI Technologies.

The collaboration, announced Wednesday (Nov. 20), will see ValidiFI provide real-time bank account validation for the consumer enrollment process for PDI’s payments solutions. This integration also covers GasBuddy, the PDI-owned fuel savings platform.

“Selecting ValidiFI as the preferred provider for bank account validation empowers consumers to choose how they enroll their bank account — using their online banking credentials or manually entering bank account information,” ValidiFI said in a news release provided to PYMNTS.  “The collaboration increases instant consumer approvals, strengthens fraud detection, and empowers more informed risk decisions through validating bank accounts and assessing behavior.”

ValidiFI also notes that — amid an uptick in open banking — roughly a third of all consumers still prefer to manually enter account information for everyday spending.

As noted here last month, account verification — and in some cases, continuous validation — is a critical component within open banking, ensuring smooth onboarding and fraud prevention.

Research from the PYMNTS Intelligence report “Can Open Banking Win Trust to Drive Real-Time Payments?” shows that 46% of American adults are interested in open banking, although adoption lags at just 11%. Fifty-seven percent of consumers said they trust their banks to provide open banking services, representing room for improvement.

This year has seen a number of partnerships in this space, For example, Dwolla and Visa teamed to bring advanced account verification capabilities to Dwolla’s account-to-account (A2A) solution, allowing the company’s clients to instantly verify account ownership and check balances in real time.

And ValidiFI recently joined forces with J.P. Morgan Payments to offer businesses more security and confidence in validating bank accounts and carrying out transactions.

These efforts come as consumers have a favorable view of pay by bank. The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Can Banks and FinTechs Bridge the Divide to an Open Banking Future?” showed that 84% of pay-by-bank users said they were highly satisfied with their pay-by-bank platforms, in part due to their speed and ease of use.

In the U.S., 36% of consumers use pay by bank, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence report “Tracking the Digital Payments Takeover: Consumer Familiarity Controls Account-to-Account Payment Growth.”

“Of those who do not use pay by bank, 19% said they lack trust, while another 3.7% said the authentication process is long and complicated,” PYMNTS wrote. “Automated, tech-driven and real-time methods to verify accounts and safeguard them may go a long way toward eliminating those pain points.”