Payment Verification

Verify an account, its balance, and its owner before you move money with a processor.

Overview

Before you initiate a payment, validate details about your end user and their financial account. Verifying their account information and account owner information helps reduce fraud risks and payment returns.

Our products enable verification for payments for ACH, RTP, or FedNow via Demand Deposit Accounts. ACH requires an account and routing number or Canadian routing and transit number. MX doesn’t move money.

After you’ve used our products to verify payment details, you’ll need to work with a processor of your choice to ensure your application can make a payment. If you're working with an MX partner, review our Moving Money with a Processor guide.

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The Platform API is required for this use case. If you're using the Nexus or Atrium API, the following information may not apply.

Choose How You Want to Integrate

Your use case and technology determines which method of integration you should use. Use the following table to decide which integration method is the best for you.

Method	Description	When to Use
Connect Widget	The Connect Widget is a pre-built, client-facing component that's presented to end users. It allows them to select and connect to their accounts. You can use the Connect Widget for Web and Mobile applications. SDKs are available for Web and React Native.	You want to use our ready-made connection experience that handles: Gathering end user’s credentials Connecting to end user’s accounts to gather financial data PostMessages for notification of status OAuth (optional)
API Only	Use API endpoints to connect to an end user's account and fetch data, using a non-MX UI connection experience. You’ll have to manage connection statuses, webhooks, and more manually with this integration.	You want to build your own end-user facing connection experience instead of using our Connect Widget, or you’re looking to build a customized verification solution within your application.

Choose Your Verification Products

Our guide provides a step-by-step integration of how our products work together to achieve payment verification. Your use case determines which of our products you need, so we’ve briefly described our products and how they contribute to Payment Verification. If you decide you don't need one of these, skip that step in the guide.

Instant Account Verification (IAV)

Instant Account Verification (IAV) is used to fetch account and routing numbers; these numbers are often required for ACH payments. IAV can also gather other data including the balance of the account at the time the account is verified which can help reduce ACH returns.

Use this data to verify the account and determine if there are sufficient funds.

The IAV product can be used in two ways, depending on your integration method.

• By using the Connect Widget in verification mode.
• By making a direct request to the verify member endpoint.

Account Owner Identification

Account Owner Identification is used to fetch account owner information such as first and last name and possibly phone number or address. The information we return depends on what the financial institution has shared with us, so responses may vary.

Use this product to reduce fraud risk by determining if your end user matches the owner of the account.

This product can be used in two ways depending on your integration method.

• By using the Connect Widget and configuring the Connect Widget to include_identity: true when running the Connect Widget in verification mode. This ensures that we gather the account owner information at the same time we gather the account and routing numbers.
• By making a direct request to the identify member endpoint.

Balance Checks

Balance Checks is used to fetch real-time account balance. Remember, we return the account balance at the time of the connection when using IAV, so you only need to use Balance Checks if you plan on scheduling payments for the future, or moving money some time after you initially used IAV. This will check the balance to ensure that the funds are still available in the account.

This product is a great way to avoid NSF fees and ACH returns, so we encourage you to use balance checks anytime you're planning a payment after you've verified an account with IAV.

The Balance Checks product can only be used by making a direct request to the check balance endpoint. Even if you're using the Connect Widget (SDK or not), you'll need to use this endpoint because it's not available directly through the Connect Widget.