Glide, in partnership with Plaid Identity Verification, offers robust fraud prevention measures to ensure we’re effortlessly onboarding good actors while screening out bad actors.

Overview of Plaid IDV

Plaid is a large fintech company specializing in onboarding infrastructure for banks, CUs, and digital banks. We leverage multiple Plaid products to open accounts and onboard members. Plaid IDV (aka ID Verification) is used to surface over 100+ risk signals in order to screen out fraudulent actors that attempt to open accounts at the Credit Union. Plaid IDV employs three categories of risk checks, which are described below. You can find a full guide on Plaid IDV linked here.

Data Source Verification

Data source verification was formerly known as lightning checks. The first risk check Plaid IDV employs involves matching member’s PII with authoritative data sources. Plaid IDV leverages proprietary datasets which includes credit header files, telecom data sets, government documents, and more. After a member enters his/her PII (name, phone number, DOB, National ID, etc.), that information will be compared to these authoritative data sources to ensure that a match is found.

Document Verification

Plaid IDV does a holistic image analysis on the document provided, looking at blur, glare, and a variety of other factors in order to determine whether the document is real. This helps prevent document tampering and fake document submissions.

Note: in order to mitigate fraud, we don’t allow document upload, only live capture via a device with a camera. If a member is signing up without a device with camera, they will be shown a QR code to scan with their phone/tablet.

Risk Check

Through Plaid IDV, Glide is able to access 100+ Risk Signals in order to make a holistic determination on a variety of risk vectors. Please review the attached doc below for a summary of the different datapoints Glide analyzes in order to determine validity.

Plaid Identity Verification Risk Checks

Watchlist Screening

Through Plaid Monitor, Glide allows you to easily create an AML screening program for members and entities that includes over a dozen watchlists covering 200 countries, PEP lists, and more. Your risk tolerance and screening preferences can be set and updated at-will directly from the Plaid Dashboard. For more information on Watchlist Screening, please refer to page 5 of the full Plaid IDV guide.

Account Linking Fraud Prevention

Beyond onboarding, Glide also applies fraud prevention when members link external bank accounts for transfers and payments. Glide uses Plaid Link to collect the external account and routing number. Members verify ownership either by logging into their financial institution through Plaid or by receiving a micro deposit.

On top of that verification, Glide layers two additional Plaid products:

Plaid Identity - When a member links an external account, Glide uses Plaid Identity to confirm that the ownership information on file at the external financial institution matches the member who initiated the link. This helps catch account takeover attempts and unauthorized account linking.

Plaid Balance - Before a transfer is initiated, Glide uses Plaid Balance to verify the linked account has sufficient funds. This protects members from overdraft and NSF fees while also reducing the risk of ACH returns due to insufficient funds. Real-time balance checks also serve as an additional fraud signal, since fraudulent actors often link accounts with minimal or zero balances.

Together, these checks ensure that an external account is real, owned by the right person, and funded before any money moves.