After running a beta test for a large adult merchant, Electracash officially launched User Authentication and Age Verification, which are both bundled into the same interface on a typical payment-processing page and require a certain amount of personal information to approve a transaction.
"Both features work similarly," Jody Hancock, vice president of marketing and sales development for Electracash, told XBiz. "Users input the last fours digits of their social security numbers, an address and date of birth."
That information is then submitted in real-time to one of the four largest credit bureaus, Hancock said. The information is matched to a database to both confirm that the purchaser is who they claim to be and that they are old enough to purchase certain age-restricted products.
Electracash runs the service off its servers and provides the merchant with an application program interface.
According to Hancock, the new age and fraud verification features have so far contributed to a significantly lower e-check chargeback ratio for both adult and mainstream companies, which are held to an even stricter chargeback ratio of less than .5 percent for unauthorized e-check transactions, as opposed to a 1-2 percent ratio for adult companies.
"Accepting e-checks enables merchants to capture online sales from the 89 million U.S. households that have a checking account, including the approximately 10 million that do not have a credit card," Electracash CEO Lee Falls said in a statement. "By helping merchants ensure their customers are who they say they are, Electracash can provide additional protection for both merchants and consumers using e-checks.”
Electracash currently serves a merchant account base consisting of 50 percent adult companies, although the company is strongly growing its base of mainstream customers because of what Hancock calls a "bigger growth and business focus to expand."