Bank Account Verification before you pay or collect
Confirms the bank account you were given exists and is registered to your customer, and whether it is more than three months old, accepts debits and credits, and whether your customer’s mobile number matches the one the bank holds.
Bank Account Verification (the South African market calls it AVS) asks the bank whether the account details provided are registered to your customer, from their ID number or, for a business account, the company registration number. If the account does not accept debits, a collection against it will fail, so this is the verification that sits between agreeing terms and moving money, whether you are paying out or collecting.
What you get, and where it stops
What you get
- That the account exists at the bank.
- That it is registered to the name and South African ID number (or, for a business account, the company registration number) you submitted.
- Whether the account has been open for more than three months.
- Whether the account accepts debits (if it does not, a collection against it will fail) and whether it accepts credits.
- Whether the mobile number you were given matches the number the bank holds for the account.
Where it stops
- That the account holds money. Nothing here is a balance enquiry.
- That a debit order will succeed on the day. A verification is true as at the moment it ran; an account can be valid and still unfunded on the day you present.
- That the person presenting it controls the account today. The verification confirms registration, not control.
Chain it with
A flow is several verifications run as one journey. These pair naturally with Bank Account Verification.
- ID VerificationConfirms the identity the account is being matched against.
- Collection Date IndicatorOnce you know the account is registered to them and accepts debits, this indicates when to present.
- CIPC Company VerificationWhere the account belongs to a company, confirms the company itself from the CIPC register.
What you need to run it
- Name
- The account holder’s name, as given to you.
- ID number or company registration number
- A South African ID number for a personal account; a company registration number for a business account. The same flow runs for both.
- Phone number
- The mobile number you were given, to be matched against the number the bank holds for the account.
- Account number
- As given to you by the customer.
- Bank
- The bank the account is held at.
- Branch
- The branch the account is held at.
What comes back
A match outcome on the account and the identity, and the answers on account age, debits, credits and the mobile-number match, returned in real time.
- Account exists
- Whether the account exists at the bank.
- Registered to
- Whether it is registered to the name and ID number, or company registration number, you submitted.
- Open more than three months
- Yes or no.
- Accepts debits
- Yes or no. If not, a collection against it will fail.
- Accepts credits
- Yes or no.
- Mobile number match
- Whether the number you were given matches the one the bank holds.
Every result is filed with a timestamped audit record.
| Outcome | What it means |
|---|---|
| Verified, with the account answers | The account exists and is registered to the identity you submitted. The account answers come back with it. |
| Not verified | One or more elements do not agree. A business account submitted against a personal ID number is a common and innocent cause. Run it with the company registration number instead. |
| Account not found | No matching account was returned. Re-capture the details before drawing a conclusion. |
Why it matters
Verifying the account before you credit or debit it is ordinary payment-fraud control: it tells you the account is registered to your customer and whether a collection against it can work. Where your programme collects bank details as part of customer due diligence, the result is part of the record the Financial Intelligence Centre Act 38 of 2001 (FICA) requires you to keep.
Questions
Why did a valid account come back as not verified?
A common cause is a business account of which your customer is a director: the account is registered to the company, so it will not match against a personal ID number. Run it with the company registration number instead. The same flow handles business accounts.
How do I run Bank Account Verification, and what does it cost?
It runs on its own or as one step in a flow. Run it from the portal, or through the API with a sandbox to build against (credentials on request). There is no public price list: book a demo and a specialist prepares a pricing proposal built around your volumes. You can pay as you go from a wallet or settle monthly on invoice.
About results
Veriflow will perform the Services with the reasonable skill and care of a competent provider of identity-verification services in South Africa. Veriflow transmits results sourced from third-party data sources, including registered South African credit bureaux, banks, official registers and published watchlists. Veriflow does not compile that underlying data, does not warrant its accuracy, completeness or currency, and gives no warranty that any verification result is correct.
A Result is an input to the Client's own assessment. Veriflow does not decide whether any person or entity is onboarded, declined, priced, offboarded, employed, granted credit or reported, and makes no recommendation as to any of those outcomes. Those decisions are made solely by the Client, on its own criteria and under its own legal obligations, and the Client must not use a Result as the sole basis for any adverse outcome affecting a person.
Every verification
People & identity
Financial
- Bank Account Verification
- Credit Score Indicator
- Collection Date Indicator
Business & compliance
Build the flow, not the verification
Tell us the journey you run and we will show you how it chains together.
Last updated .