2024 Public Sector Perspectives

Account Verification: A Must Have for the Public Sector Joseph Polselli TTS North America Payments Business Execution Head & Citi ® Verify Product Manager Gary Schneider Head of North America Public Sector Group, Corporate Banking A ccount verification services can significantly reduce misdirected and potentially fraudulent payments to citizens and companies, improving satisfaction and reinforcing confidence in payment processing for public sector entities. Governments and public sector entities make countless payments to citizens and organizations for social security, pensions, tax and general business. As custodians of taxpayers’ money, it is imperative that governments maximize security, limit potential fraud and meet compliance requirements in order to ensure effectiveness, strengthen credibility and grow citizens’ trust. One important way to do this is through account verification services. In the US, Early Warning Services is the custodian for the National Shared Database which consists of hundreds of millions of account details contributed by approximately 2,500 financial institutions. This database is primarily used to support account validations, but also has the ability to support validations against tax ID and Social Security numbers associated with the bank account. Some banks layer additional functionality on top of information from the database. The National Shared Database equips banks with the tools needed to help public and private sector clients to fight potentially fraudulent payments, which are a significant and growing problem. In 2022, the National Shared Database was used to alert financial institutions to $13 billion of high-risk transactions, with more than 2.7 billion checks screened, 49 million new accounts screened and $1.4 billion in potential check fraud avoided. 1 1 https://www.linkedin.com/posts/early-warning-services_national-shared-database-activity-7105211612520742913-kU_d/ Citi Perspectives for the Public Sector 65 As custodians of taxpayers’ money, it is imperative that governments maximize security, limit potential fraud and meet compliance requirements in order to ensure effectiveness, strengthen credibility and grow citizens’ trust. 64 Account Verification: A Must Have for the Public Sector