One of these measures is a solid business verification process when providing other businesses access to your software or services. Otherwise, bad actors can use your software to commit fraud or practice malicious behavior.
Why Should You Vet Your Customers?
Vetting your customers is key to achieving the following:
- Determining the authenticity of the company
- Ensuring the individuals running the company aren’t involved in fraud
Business verification isn’t just essential for financial services, though. Software and service-based companies should also engage in this practice. Doing so reassures clients and consumers you care about running an ethical business.
Often called KYB or Know Your Business, this verification is part of required anti-money laundering (AML) legislation drafted to stop financial crimes. However, it’s a necessary practice for all companies targeted by criminals, not just banks and cash-heavy businesses.
Benefits of Business Verification
No one can afford to conduct business by blindly trusting potential clients. And while vetting customers can be an arduous process, it does provide a variety of benefits for your company.
- Enhances B2B relationships. Current and potential clients want partners they can trust. Vetting your customers ensures you’re not doing business with questionable people.
- Ensures compliance regulations are met. The US government has strict AML regulations that require companies to vet their clients and report suspicious activity. If you fail to do so, you can be hit with significant fines and possible legal action.
- Prevents fraud. In 2022, fraud cost companies millions of dollars, much of it caused by external forces. If your company loses money or data due to fraud, it harms your reputation. For instance, T-Mobile had to pay $500 million in 2022 to settle a class action suit after a data breach.
- Promotes quality customers in your sales pipeline. Strict standards mean you only deal with quality customers, which makes everyone’s job easier and more profitable.
How Caller ID Reputation Verifies Businesses
At Caller ID Reputation, we recognize the importance of maintaining integrity within our industry. That’s why we proudly provide our services to reputable businesses only. To maintain our values and the trust of our customers and affiliates, we ask that all prospective accounts follow our business verification process.
Below is our business verification guideline. Please keep this list in mind to prepare for a speedy verification process.
1. Basic Information
We vet for patterns related to malicious or harmful actors, including fake websites and data. As a result, we need to verify the following data for new clients:
- A valid business phone number
- A valid email
- A website with original content
- An online presence, such as social media accounts
- The verification of the business with local governments
We need to know you are who you say you are before we do business together.
2. Interaction
We review the interactions a business has with us for suspicious behavior. These interactions include:
- Contact between you and your Account Executive
- Live chat submissions
- Emails and other forms of communication
We can often determine the legitimacy of your company by reviewing these communications and searching for unusual patterns.
3. Submission Activity
An account’s submissions are examined to check for authenticity. We look at the following:
- Number of submissions
- Edits to your submissions
- Speed and frequency of submissions
Legitimate businesses have a relatively consistent number of submissions spread over standard time periods.
4. Internal Analysis
Our specialists further review verification submissions using our internal protocol for identifying valid accounts.
- A heuristic analysis of your business to examine code for evidence of viruses
Following all these steps will result in the verification of your business and the activation of your Caller ID Reputation account.
Business Verification is Simply Ethical
Business verification is a necessary and ethical practice made essential by the rise in cybercrimes. Many companies aren’t what they seem because the internet has made fraud easier and more prevalent. Protecting clients and companies requires a detailed business verification process. Respected companies such as Caller ID Reputation must KYB.
Verifying your customers is essential to ensure your company abides by all proper regulations. Doing so requires gathering basic identification information and monitoring transactions for suspicious patterns. If a business doesn’t practice due diligence, it can end up in serious legal trouble and be subjected to hefty government fines.
Nevertheless, business verification also protects the client. Companies will suffer if a B2B partner has a data breach, potentially exposing highly sensitive information to the world. In today’s cyber climate, verify, verify, verify is the price of doing business.
