| PERG News: March 2025 |
Half a dozen PERG members are now in the process of getting set up with their company-branded Plaid dashboard and scheduling a staff training session to begin using it. Michael Koerner reports “Using the Plaid screening process helps us navigate the fraud and scams that rental houses like Koerner Camera are exposed to on a regular basis. It's a great value, all rental houses should use it.”
ESTA is thrilled to make Plaid Identity Verification Services available to our members. ESTA/PERG's demonstration and Q&A session is available on ESTA's YouTube Channel.
In this PERG Coffee Break, ESTA Executive Director, Erin Grabe, demonstrated Plaid explaining what is it, who uses it, what tools Plaid provides for fraud detection, what the dashboard looks like, and how your staff performs the verification process.
Find out more at: https://www.esta.org/PERG/Initiatives/plaid.html
For sign-up information email us at plaid@esta.org.
Until now, sophisticated automated identification verification services have been out of reach for many ESTA/PERG members. Plaid is one of the leading services trusted by over 8000 leading brands. ESTA is thrilled to make the service available and affordable to ESTA members by a special arrangement with Plaid that leverages our collective buying power as a trade association.
Level-up Your Fraud-Detection Powers
Plaid’s website slogan is, “More customers, minus the fraudsters.” Plaid uses a streamlined process that takes only a couple minutes and provides information that can tell you if a new "customer" is a risk. We are hopeful that access to Plaid will greatly enhance new-customer vetting procedures, save staff time, provide greater peace of mind, and help save companies from serious losses due to fraud. If you detect a bad actor, you can share that information via RENTAL GUARD and benefit the entire community.
What Does Plaid Do and How Does it Work?
The Plaid system confirms a customer’s identity information in less than three minutes, while simultaneously analyzing a wide range of risk signals. These include device and IP checks, email checks, phone checks, stolen and synthetic identity risk scoring, network risk checks, and behavioral analytics.
To verify a customer, your staff generates a link using your very own Plaid dashboard. They email or text the link to the customer. The client uses their mobile device to enter identifying information, a live photo, and a photo of their ID. Plaid checks the information and the ID against regulated data sources. Plaid also checks whether email and phone number are new, disposable, or associated with a data breach. It detects the use of VPN or Tor for time zone and geolocation mismatch. It looks for fabricated, manipulated, or stolen identity information. And it performs behavioral analysis on things like typing speed, accuracy, and method of data entry to identify behavior typically associated with risky individuals, fraud rings, or bots.
What do I Get and What does in Cost?
When members enroll, they are provided their own easy-to-use Plaid dashboard, co-branded with your company logo along and ESTA's logo. ESTA creates log-in credentials for as many of your employees as you wish so they each can create verification links and check results. You can customize your company's dashboard with the risk rules you want Plaid to use and set to your risk tolerance level to create a consistent go/no-go determination across your company.
You can send the verification link to the customer via your email client or, as an option, send the links via SMS via ESTA's SMS service provider.
Fixed Fees
Plaid Account $500/yr.
SMS link sending $5 per month, billed quarterly
Per Use Fees (billed quarterly)
U.S. IDs $5/verification
Canada and UK IDs $6/verification
IDs from all other countries $8/verification
In a recent RENTAL GUARD report, a Sony Burano was rented and not returned. The paperwork was flawless, the references checked out, the insurance was verified, and the credit card went through. The reason the rental appeared normal was that the person renting the equipment was using a good fake ID of a real person. A Plaid verification would have identified this fraud. The fraudsters would not even have been able to complete the verification. In fact, it is quite likely that when you tell fraudsters that they need to complete an ID verification, that they will never complete it and just disappear from your Friday afternoon.
Thieves have become better and better and personifying producers. Rental companies need more sophisticated tools to root them out. We are very hopeful that Plaid will give them that boost!
