New service from Eiger Systems designed to help firms spot criminal activity

Payment solutions provider Eiger Systems has launched a new service designed to help firms that accept Direct Debit payments to spot fraudulent activity.

Criminals are able to expose weaknesses in the current Direct Debit scheme by either posing as legitimate customers or by supplying false account information that is able to pass existing checks, according to Eiger's director of product strategy, Jonathan Williams.

Bank Wizard Absolute combines information from Eiger's parent company Experian with its own Bank Wizard software to help businesses check in real time if an account exists and, if so, whether it belongs to a particular customer and associated address.

"This solution ties three pieces of information together: the customer ID, their address and bank account details," Williams explained. "What the poor IT manager is charged with is removing as much risk as possible, but they've not been able to do this level of verification before."

The service is available from today to customers on a per-usage licensing model.