Now supporting Identity for 1,000+ institutions

A few weeks ago, we announced that we had expanded coverage of our Identity product to 300 financial institutions in the United States. Today, we’re excited to share that we’ve broadened coverage once again, and now supply Identity information for more than 1,000 financial institutions in the United States. Some of our newest additions include major community institutions like IBERIABANK, Simmons Bank, and Community Bank.

More and more, it’s becoming clear that identity information is one of the most powerful tools in continuing to develop the financial technology ecosystem. It makes a critical difference in app developers’ ability to serve their users effectively, as well as in fighting fraud. And given that preventing fraud in the ecosystem benefits all parties—from banks to developers to consumers themselves—making identity validation easier is a clear win for everyone.

But despite identity data’s potential (or perhaps because of it), this information is not trivial for consumers to make use of in other applications. In fact, some financial institutions have even questioned whether consumers should be able to delegate access to this information in the first place. But this point of view misunderstands the opportunity identity information holds to improve the ecosystem for all, and can force developers into insecure alternatives that put end users at higher risk.

With Identity, financial application developers can compare this information—including the account owner’s name, email, physical address, and phone number—to user-submitted data. Identity verification therefore supports critical services for consumers as well as offers key signals to mitigate fraud.

You might remember that we started the year with support for just 11 institutions on Identity, a reflection of the sensitivity this data must be treated with as well as the challenges in sharing it. That’s why we’re especially excited to be expanding coverage for this product in such a major way.

If you’re already using Identity, you automatically have access to these new institutions, and Link instantly includes new institutions as we add to the list. If you’d like to take a look at the full list of institutions we now support, check out our docs and pull the latest from our API.