Vikar adds Plaid tools for account funding and identity checks

Vikar Technologies has partnered with Plaid to embed account funding authentication and identity verification tools into its platform for community banks and credit unions, the companies announced. Vikar said the integration is intended to speed account opening, reduce fraud risk and limit manual review during customer onboarding.

The arrangement connects Plaid’s payments and identity services with Vikar’s unified technology platform, which supports account opening, lending, know-your-customer and know-your-business processes, treasury services and wealth management workflows. Vikar said financial institutions using its system will be able to handle funding and identity checks in one environment rather than moving between separate systems.

The integration is aimed at a recurring operational problem in digital account opening: confirming that an applicant is who they claim to be, that an external account can be used to fund the new account, and that the person opening the account matches the owner of the funding account. Vikar said the Plaid tools allow those checks to take place in real time.

Three functions added to the Vikar platform

Vikar described three core capabilities from the integration. The first is authentication of external bank accounts at the point of account opening. According to Vikar, this can remove delays associated with trial deposits and reduce failed funding attempts.

The second capability is identity verification. Vikar said the process uses document-based checks and authoritative data signals to confirm an applicant’s identity in real time. The company said this is designed to support Bank Secrecy Act and anti-money laundering compliance requirements and reduce the need for front-line staff to conduct manual reviews.

The third feature is identity match, which compares the identity submitted by the customer with the name on the financial account being used for funding. Vikar said that check adds fraud protection at the account-opening stage.

Vikar said the combined services can be used across its workflows for consumer, small business and complex commercial accounts. The company said its financial institution clients will be able to open accounts faster, fund them more reliably and onboard customers with more confidence within the same platform they already use.

Community bank focus

Glenn Bolstad, founder and chief executive of Vikar Technologies, said the Plaid partnership supports the company’s effort to provide community banks and credit unions with digital banking tools. He said funding authentication and identity verification have been sources of friction in account opening, and that embedding Plaid into Vikar is intended to help banks fund accounts faster, verify customers more confidently and reduce manual work that slows onboarding.

Vikar said the partnership forms part of a broader plan to expand its network of integrated partners for banks and credit unions. The company said account opening, funding and identity verification are increasingly connected parts of the digital banking process.

The announcement did not disclose commercial terms of the partnership, implementation timelines for individual institutions, or expected transaction volumes.

This story draws on original reporting from Finextra Research.