National Pawnbrokers Association members to benefit from deal with Callcredit Information Group

Leading ID and verification specialist Callcredit has signed a deal with The National Pawnbrokers Association (NPA) to offer its 2000 members the opportunity to sign up for Callcredit's services. The benefit for pawnbrokers will be to safeguard them against money laundering, fraud and inadvertently receiving stolen goods.

The solution, Callcredit's CallValidate product, has been developed in line with 'The Gold Standard Code of Practice'- a voluntary code of conduct for the face to face purchase of second hand jewellery - and provides greater protection than a basic paper based identity check.

With only a name, address, date of birth, and credit card or bank details, CallValidate can assess the potential for fraud. It provides NPA's members with peace of mind, reducing the possibility of fraud by an assumed identity and suffering chargebacks as the result of accepting fraudulent card payments. An additional benefit of CallValidate is the improved 'customer experience' by taking away the need to provide physical proof of identity.

Peter Mansfield, Managing Director, Callcredit said: "We are pleased to be working with the NPA and to be helping their members verify each customer using a market leading solution. CallValidate will help members trade responsibly and compliantly, providing both the pawnbroker and the customer with a sense of added security whilst acting as a deterrent to offenders attempting to launder money or dispose of stolen property."

The UK pawnbroking industry is growing at 15 per cent* each year with consumers preferring the speed and convenience of pawnbroking for small cash sums.  As the incidence of individuals trying to sell stolen property and fraud escalates, pawnbrokers have to be more vigilant and have cost effective and quick solutions in place to check a person's identity.

CallValidate verifies a customer's identity in line with the Joint Money Laundering Steering Group guidelines, using the full electoral roll and a range of qualified data sets, including personal account performance data shared between UK banks, building societies and other lenders. All information is then checked against the 'live banking network' to confirm that the card or bank details are correct and match those of the customer, providing a pass or fail in less than two seconds.

Ray Perry, CEO of the NPA said: "The NPA exists to safeguard the interest of Pawnbrokers, by collaborating with leading ID and verification specialist Callcredit and providing CallValidate at an affordable cost to our members, this will help us to protect our members' interests whilst saving them from costly charge backs.

"CallValidate will make a big difference to our members and their customer's experience providing a seamless and quick solution to the ID verification process."

The NPA is the trade organisation for the Britain's pawnbroking industry and represents over 2000 pawnbrokers' stores.  There are 2,187 pawnbrokers and money shop stores in the UK of which 90 per cent are members of the NPA.

* Research from Apex Insight - Pawnbrokers and money stores (November 2012)