The URU Verification Service allows the identity of your customer to be verified, using data collected from the customer.

The Service can be used in many different ways, for example:‎

  • to ensure the customer is over a certain age 
  • to verify current or past address details 
  • to prevent identify fraud

Once the details have been collected and sent to Mastercard Payment Gateway Services, they are immediately sent to the GB Group for verification. GB Group’s URU Verification Service checks the information against a wide range of sources – including the Electoral Roll and Deceased Register – and returns the results. The full results are then passed back to your systems via Mastercard Payment Gateway Services, where they are used to decide whether to proceed to a Credit/Debit Card or BACS Payment transaction.

Requirements 

Before you can go live with this Service you will need the following:

  • an account set up with Mastercard Payment Gateway Services,
  • an account set up with GB Group’s URU Verification Service
  • the ability to send XML transactions to the Mastercard Payment Gateway.

Transaction Types 

Mastercard Payment Gateway Services provide two transaction types with which to access the URU Service:

Transaction Type Affect Uses
authenticate Performs verification based on the data provided Verifies data & returns result in real time
get_log_by_authentication_id Returns the result of a previous transaction Allows the results of an existing authenticate to be re-collected at a later time

 

Performing Transactions

Each transaction type requires specific information to be provided. In addition to the transaction type specific information, all transactions also require:

  • client and password – these are security details that identify your Mastercard Payment Gateway Services account
  • A unique reference generated by your system – to allow transactions to be distinguished from each other
  • the transaction type – either authenticate or get_log_by_authentication_id
  • Support is also available to submit information in the transaction to allow different URU accounts to be used for different transactions. Login details for the account that should be used need to be supplied for this type of transaction

Authenticating a customer

Many pieces of information can be used to authenticate a customer. At least one from the following list must be gathered to enable authentication.

  • Customer name
  • Date of birth
  • Gender
  • Current Address
  • Residence status at current address
  • Up to three previous addresses
  • Dates of residence at each address
  • Full or partial Passport details, for both UK and International passports
  • Birth details – country of birth and mother’s maiden name
  • Details from household telephone and electricity bills
  • Credit or debit card information
  • Driving license details
  • Current employment status

Full details of the exact data and its format are available in the Developers Guide.

Re-Collect Authentication Results

To perform a get_log_by_authentication_id transaction, the reference number returned with the result of the authentication is required.

Responses

There are two basic response types which can be returned from the Service:

  • Accepted
  • Error

All Mastercard Payment Gateway Services responses will contain a status code, status message, time, Mastercard Payment Gateway Services reference number. There will be additional data in the responses depending on the type of the transaction.

Accepted

An Accepted transaction returns the results of the URU verification.

Each element of the URU service used for verification will return detailed response codes and information about each test performed. The response codes fall into four main groups:

  • Match
  • Warning
  • Mismatch
  • Comment

It is possible to configure a URU account (see GB Group documentation) to return scores for individuals’ performance on the tests submitted. The interpretation of these scores is dependent on the configuration at the URU side of the transaction. Mastercard Payment Gateway Services will return the score value for any transaction that is thus enabled. Interpretation of the score is the responsibility of the merchant.

Full details of the individual response codes and how they relate to the data submitted are available from GB Group.

Error responses

In the event of an error, whether in validating the input data or as the result of a communication error with the URU server, the status and reason fields will provide a general explanation of the problem. If more detail is available, it is sent back in an information field.