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Credit Card Company Solves Data Quality Problems

Web Service Validates Addresses in Real Time

Total Card Inc., is an independent servicer of Master-Card and Visa accounts. The company issues its own cards geared to people with less than perfect credit. We market our cards through a variety of advertising channels, steering potential customers to our company Web sites: www.sendvisa.com or www.newvisacard.com.

When customers arrive at the Web site, they complete a short application form and the approval process begins. A key part of the approval process is verifying that the information entered on the application is correct. We do real time verification of their social security numbers, validate whether the person has applied for a card, and we flag potential frauds.

Total Card must diligent and careful that the correct address has been received. To comply with Patriot Act regulations to fight terrorism and money laundering, Total Card, like all financial institutions, must obtain the street address for each applicant as well as other identifying information. People frequently enter incorrect address information on applications, either inadvertently or for other reasons. The result, however, is the same: we were getting crushed by returned mail.

To solve this problem, we turned to Melissa Data Corporation and reviewed a number of potential solutions, opting for their Data Quality Web Service, (DQWS). DQWS provides real-time address and telephone number validation over the Internet. Information is wrapped into a Web services (SOAP) document and sent to Melissa Data's servers for verification. If the information is validated, the application process continues if not, errors are flagged for investigation.

DQWS offered several advantages. First, DQWS is a platform-neutral solution. Total Card uses open source technology extensively, including the Apache Web server running on Linux, and the PostgreSQL and MySQL open source databases. We are very security oriented. Nothing beats Apache and Linux.

Second, with DQWS, Total Card does not have to maintain large address databases on its own servers. Melissa Data is licensed to maintain the U.S. Postal Service database of more than 142 million deliverable addresses. We don't have to worry about monthly or quarterly updates of the data. And we don't have to set aside gigabytes of space on our servers.

Third, the solution was easy to implement. All you need to do is add a little bit of code to generate a valid XML package. In fact, Melissa Data supplies examples of the needed code on its Web site. We simply modified that code to fit our specific set up. Melissa Data's technical staff was available to help me make the necessary changes, and I was able to implement the production solution in a single weekend.

The most important benefit, however, is that DQWS works and works well. Address verification is the last step in the application process and must be completed quickly and efficiently. You don't want people hung up at the end of the process. From a sales perspective, once the address is verified, you have closed the deal. From a customer service perspective, we could get hundreds of calls from people saying that they tried to apply for a card and never got a response.

Currently, Total Card verifies more than 1,000 addresses daily using DQWS. There has been no degradation in performance. DQWS is supported by multiple servers using load-balancing technology to guarantee a real-time response. DQWS has served its purpose. The impact has been substantial. During September 2004, the first month of using of the address cleansing solution, credit card packages returned due to bad addresses had decreased 70% compared to August figures.

Mike Wheeler is Chief Software Architect, with Total Card Inc. He can be reached at 605-977-1813.