RealPage and Plaid Team to Curb Rental Fraud

Real estate software/data analytics provider RealPage has debuted tools to combat rental fraud.

The new offerings, announced Wednesday (March 27), will be available with the company’s OneSite and On-Site leasing and property management platforms, using technology from financial data network Plaid.

“RealPage recently announced results from its extensive fraud study that sheds light on the impact of fraud today, its increasing complexity and the need for solutions to detect fraud earlier in the leasing process,” the company said in a news release.

“Our nationwide study revealed that often over half of rental fraud is discovered after a resident moves in, which leaves the property vulnerable to extensive damage,” added Josh Albrechtsen, RealPage senior vice president and general manager for front office solutions.

The partnership with Plaid will help RealPage customers detect fraud earlier via “multifaceted verification across data, device, document and biometrics,” employing artificial intelligence and machine learning, while streamlining tenant sign-up.

The new tools use AI to detect more instances of fraud, increasing verification methods and broader coverage across more than 16,000 document types in 200-plus countries and territories. It also lets landlords avoid losing prospects through “an easy-to-use UI, fast identity verification, and full integration of verification processing and results into the OneSite/On-Site leasing processes,” the release said.

Plaid’s partnership with RealPage follows a similar collaboration, announced earlier this year, with property management software provider RentRedi.

The two companies were already working together to simplify rent collection, and in January expanded their integration to enhance its tenant screening feature, with RentRedi leveraging Plaid’s technology to enable landlords to verify the income and assets of rental prospects.

Elsewhere in the ID verification space, PYMNTS explored the evolution of authentication practices in a recent interview with Kyle King, director of product management at NCR Voyix.

“Authentication practices have been in place for quite some time, and we’ve gotten pretty good at enforcing them. But we’re starting to see an evolution,” said King, who spoke with PYMNTS for the series “What’s Next in Payments: Authentication: What’s New and What’s Next?”

As the threat of fraud grows, financial institutions are trying new ways to improve security and protect their customers.

King explained that the payments and financial industries are exploring things like location-based identifiers and behavioral biometrics to enhance security and ensure that fraud can be detected and stopped before a transaction can occur.

“We’re starting to see the evolution of behavioral biometrics, and with this, we start to see financial institutions include three, maybe four of these factors in decisioning for fraudulent behavior or authentication at the front door,” he said.