After 20 years of being on the cutting edge of identity data, we’re still tackling the toughest of data dilemmas to help companies solve their identity verification and risk management challenges. These challenges have increasingly become more complex as the world’s digital and mobile modes of operation go global and require international data. Balancing a great customer experience with effective fraud protection adds a new layer of difficulty when verifying sign-ups or transactions along the entire customer lifecycle.
One of our latest initiatives has been focused on the expansion of Ekata’s leading identity verification solution, Pro Insight Identity Check, into international markets.
So many of our customers provide global services and products, and it’s difficult to normalize, validate, and verify international data across various markets. So it made sense for us to tackle this challenge for them and doing it well, well, it’s quite difficult.” – Kushal Shah, Director of Product Management, Ekata.
And here’s why. There are 195 countries and 61 territories in the world today. And maybe actually 196 countries, depending on your diplomatic relations status with China. Actually, there is not a country named China, as the official country name is People’s Republic of China. We are fortunate to have International Organization for Standardization(ISO) standards. The benefits of ISO International Standards ensure that businesses have the strategic tools they need to develop in new markets and enable developing countries to facilitate free and global trade and level the playing fields.
Since every country has their own unique way of structuring addresses, phone numbers, and calling codes, international data “normalization” is extremely difficult, not to mention all of the different languages represented in the global data records. We are very excited about the great progress we’ve made to provide a uniform response for name, email, IP, physical address, and phone data in every country in the world. Here is an example of why this challenge affects companies that validate customer information on transactions:
Imagine you are an international airline attempting to verify orders for plane tickets in 46 countries around the globe. You receive name, email address, phone number, and billing address on all of your orders. Unfortunately, you won’t know if the credit card used was stolen until 30-60 days after the flight was taken. To properly verify the identity of the purchasing party, you need to ensure the phone number is real, the email is valid, the billing address is legitimate, and the IP address where the order was placed is close to the billing address and isn’t using a proxy server. To do this without Ekata, first, you’d need your own data science team and second, you would have to find address verification services in all 46 countries, build logic around how each provider responds to your request, and do so for each data attribute you’re trying to source, aggregate, corroborate and validate. Multiply this across data providers for phones, emails, etc. and the problem compounds into an unmanageable situation, leaving most companies blind when attempting to verify international data customer transactions.
Solving these and other complex problems around phones, addresses, emails, and IPs allows us to provide a reliable and consistent response globally, giving companies the confidence to use our data worldwide.
Our foundation is built around Rich, Complete, and Accurate data, and continue to strive to provide industry leading data not just in North America, but globally, to help companies
- Verify good orders for shipping
- Fine-tune data modeling algorithms
- Mitigate risk on transactions
- Normalize multiple data sources
This is done by providing data on phones, such as carrier, line type and phone location, addresses including exact location and street-level validation, emails, like first seen dates and disposable status, IP information including geolocation, proxy, connection type, distance from input address and phone, and in certain markets, the ownership of phone, addresses, and emails.
To learn more about what data attributes are available in the countries you do business in, contact one of our data experts.
