Secure Instant Account Link

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Availability

This guide is intended to provide a general outline of new Galileo functionality prior to its release to production. The information in this guide is therefore subject to change as development proceeds and is not a guarantee of future functionality. If you are interested in this feature, contact Galileo for details.

As financial transactions move from paper-based methods to digital platforms, and advances in digital technology bring more types of businesses online, the need for comprehensive fraud prevention and security protocols is paramount. At the same time, account holders now expect immediate and error-free financial transactions.

With Galileo's Secure Instant Account Link your account holders can securely connect their external financial accounts to providers—including financial institutions and fintechs—all based on their explicit consent. Powered by Mastercard Finicity, this open-banking feature uses secure APIs to instantly link accounts and retrieve account ownership details. Galileo then performs account ownership verification based on set rules. This product eliminates the common friction point of manually entering account and routing numbers by leveraging permission-based data sharing. This provides a secure mechanism to instantly validate ownership, allowing account holders to log in directly via their bank's secure interface (facilitated by Finicity) without ever exposing their credentials to your platform.

Secure Instant Account Link is specifically designed for account holders to link accounts they personally own (the "me-to-me" use case). It verifies that the user owns the external account they are connecting.

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Note

This method is not intended for linking or facilitating transfers to/from accounts owned by different individuals.

Key benefits

• Increase account activation — Improve sign-up and funding completion rates by removing manual account and routing-number entry.
• Maintain compliance — Secure Instant Account Link provides a fraudulent activity detection system to validate account ownership, which is a requirement outlined in Nacha's operating rules for originating WEB debits.
  Reduce risk and returns — Verifying account ownership prior to initiating ACH transfers can reduce the risk of returns due to incorrect account information or fraud.

Use case: New account funding

Reed decides to open a debit account with PartnerBank to take advantage of their Advanced Checking offers, which features a high annual percentage yield (APY). To fund his new account, Reed plans to transfer money from his existing Finbank account.
To do this, Reed navigates to the web interface where he has the option to add funds by linking his external bank account. He selects "Finbank" from a list of financial institutions and securely logs in using his online banking credentials. After choosing the specific account he wants to link, he is quickly verified as the account owner, and the link is established.
With the connection to his external account in place, Reed can now initiate an ACH transfer from his verified Finbank account to add funds to his new debit account.

Account holder experience

Finicity's Connect SDK offers flexible integration options, allowing you to implement either a comprehensive, out-of-the-box user experience or tailor it to your specific needs. When your account holders want to link their external accounts from your app/web interface, their experience can be as simple as this:

1. Navigate to your app/web interface.
2. Click the Secure Instant Account Link feature.

3. Search for and select the external bank.
4. Enter their external banking credentials in the secure interface.

5. Select the specific account to link and grant permission.
6. Your interface provides a confirmation.

What Galileo provides

From Galileo, you can expect the following for Secure Instant Account Link programs:

• Payment Hub API endpoints to manage external account links and account ownership verification, including but not limited to retrieving external account details, deleting external accounts, and modifying the account nickname.
• Account Event to provide account statuses, including account creation, verification success/failure, and deleted accounts, and any additional related details.

Implementation

To enable Galileo's Secure Instant Account Link solution, you are responsible for integrating with Mastercard Finicity through its Connect SDK. Galileo will perform additional setup steps on the back end.