Smartphones and Mobile Credit Card Processing

June 11, 2023

Smartphones are everywhere. Everyone seems to have one, with all 240 million of them in the United States, they are clearly the most popular consumer electronic device today. With landlines on the decline and more and more people cutting the cord with their cable providers, our smartphones have become both our primary point of contact and one of the most consistent and reliable subscription services today.

Increasingly, consumer mobile accounts are also being used by merchants in loan origination, for identity verification and fraud prevention. A number of products and services have sprung up to help companies leverage this powerful dataset.

One example is MicroBilt’s Mobile Device Verification solution – also known as MDV. A 30 year veteran in the risk management space with deep experience serving the subprime market, MicroBilt designed MDV specifically for merchants. With MDV a business can verify that a submitted name, address, and wireless number match the records of the wireless carrier.

Similarly, merchants can confirm whether the account is active or inactive, the type of account it is (personal, commercial, government), and how long the account has been in service.

All of these data points are helpful in verifying the credibility of submitted consumer information, and in preventing fraud and chargebacks.

And then, of course, there’s location. Smartphones continually record GPS location information on each device. With consumer consent during the application process, matching a submitted location to the proximity of a device is another helpful data point for fraud detection and identity verification.

Location information can also be monitored on a weekly basis. Triangulated through cellular towers, this is helpful in identifying the proximity of a device (and to the degree the account has been verified, and the owner of the device as well).

With a powerful, GPS-enabled computer sitting in most consumer’s pockets today, merchants have been given a new and powerful tool to assist them in doing business better. For companies not using mobile account information, you might be surprised just how easily and inexpensively it can be added to your regular business practices. Mobile credit card processing is definitely worth investigating, especially if you need a high risk merchant account. PayKings has solutions for virtually any business type – contact us today for a free QuikQuote.