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Grand Rapids, Mich.-based VerifyValid is offering consumers and businesses ways to send electronic checks via e-mail and social applications like LinkedIn and Facebook, and is believed to be the first company to offer digital payments in all of these formats. The company has received some patents and has others pending.
Unlike ACH or wire transactions, the VerifyValid payments don’t require the recipient to divulge a routing number, bank account number or any other sensitive personal information, Paul Doyle, VerifyValid CEO and founder, tells Mobile Marketing & Technology, referring to the company’s Mobile Checkbook product as a “checkbook in the cloud.”
“We’re proud of our ability to create and innovate around the check,” Doyle says. “We use the check rails, but we’re not like any other check that you have ever seen before.”
VerifyValid offers commercial customers the electronic payments at 50 cents a check — basically the cost of a stamp — but there aren’t the typical fees associated with other electronic payments, Doyle says, adding that Mobile Checkbook also uses sophisticated
Consumers can get a free, advertising-supported version, MagicMony.
“Your mobile phone becomes your mobile checkbook,” Doyle says. “Since it’s based on existing bank accounts, there is no new-fangled application to learn or information to type.”
VerifyValid has a strategic partnership with check printer Deluxe Corp. that enables customers to order electronic checks, complete with their financial institution’s own routing number. Deluxe is also a strategic distribution partner.
VerifyValid had 410 million transactions in 2014, ten times the number of the previous year. The company is working with about 20,000 commercial banks, with 100,000 unique payees. Doyle expects the total dollar amount of VerifyValid checks written in 2015 to exceed $5 billion.