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Payment Pathways is the only company in the market that manages the banking industry’s registry of safe, public payment addresses: Greenlist™. Greenlist enables consumers to proactively protect their financial identity and enable inbound money transfers by publicly listing a safe electronic payment address.
Our vision and mission is helping you the consumer to achieve informational self-determination and to protect you proactively against someone from ever being able to direct electronic payments meant for you to an electronic payment address other than your safe, public one.
Our product, Greenlist, enables only your most trusted personal banker to provide for you a way reduce the number of databases that must contain your confidential banking and credit card account information.
This systemically eliminates almost every risk of identity theft and credit fraud. Here’s how:
Greenlist service is available from your local bank for $4.95 per month, or $59.40 annually. Fees can vary as many banks offer fee waivers to register new and existing customers alike. It is extremely competitive compared to ineffective credit monitoring and is the only product on that market today that proactively helps protect your payments as well as your financial payment address identity.
Banks are the guardians of your information as well as your finances. Only banks and their designated proxies are permitted to register users in the Greenlist. This is necessary because banks trust other banks to “know their own customers”. By not allowing consumers to directly register, the Greenlist prevents fraudsters from establishing fictional payment addresses for legitimate businesses or consumers. Each bank vouches that its customers’ account information is accurate upon registration. This means that if ever a payment discrepancy should occur, the registrar bank accepts the burden of liability for the originating depository financial institution’s payment.
According to the FBI, identity theft is one of the fastest-growing U.S. crimes with over 10 million victims. Studies show that about one in five families has been a victim and someone has their identity stolen every 4 seconds in the U.S. With Greenlist protection, a deposit- only payment address cannot be stolen or otherwise used for other purposes because money would still sweep into your true bank account. Federal Regulations prohibit banks from switching bank account address assignments without proper authorization from account owners. Consumers trust their banks to protect their private information.
A thief cannot use any information that can be found in the Greenlist to steal or redirect your funds. Some less-likely threats are theoretically possible. A thief might try to force a payment to an account for some nefarious purpose, including implying acceptance of something because payment was received. Probing attacks might be attempted to see how systems respond and Denial of Service attacks are possible, in addition to the “standard” threats of impersonation and theft. However, in practice, Greenlist identifiers, bank support, and the simplicity of safe payment addresses provide unprecedented protection in today’s environment of online payments.
That depends on the merchant. Online merchants have been known to incent consumers with as much as $10.00 to “pay the right way” (e.g., Google Checkout). Merchants can use Greenlist to switch payment requests for bank authentication and authorization for shoppers who are timid about divulging their credit card information online. Online merchants can even enjoy more savings than Google’s Checkout currently provides to them.
You really do not have to give out your Social Security Number just because vendors often like to ask for it. There is no legal requirement to divulge this information most of the time. If a merchant’s database is ever hacked and your SSN is divulged, you can quickly become the subject of identity theft. Such breaches affected one in seven Americans that have shopped online. Banks have our SSNs by legal right. Bankers are required by their Federal regulators to know their customers. When registering safe public payment addresses for consumers and small businesses alike in the Greenlist, banks must digitally sign all registration information and vouch for its accuracy. Just a trio of public identifiers — name, address, and phone number — is all that is needed to uniquely identify a person anywhere in the world!
By never having your true bank account information in the first place. The Greenlist only knows your name, address, and phone number and it uses these to display your Deposit-Only Account information, your safe public payment address. When you are paying with a Greenlist Financial Identity, the Greenlist operates in its “switch” mode and relays the request for payment to your online bank. It does this only after verifying that the merchant you intend to pay is indeed also greenlisted. Your bank proceeds with its own authentication sign-on procedure so you can authorize the payment. Online merchants never have to be given anything other than your phone number, Greenlist ID Number, or any other safe public identifier(s) that you choose to have listed in your Greenlist registration.
It means paying with a bank-certified direct payment method that avoids unnecessary risks of fraud by design. Verifying that both buyers and sellers are authentic before a transaction can occur significantly lowers the risk bearer’s risks. When this happens, relatively high Interchange fees that are normally charged to merchants when they pay with Credit Cards or Debit cards can be greatly reduced.
Yes. Because now their savings from payment-processing costs can fund such programs.
You can now give out your Deposit-Only Account number or your Greenlist ID Number freely because they are safe public payment addresses, and no funds can ever be debited from that account.
You can take steps with Credit Bureaus that can reduce your volume of junk mail. Many banks offer to take these steps for you as a service that can add even further value to their Greenlist program. Display of Greenlist Directory information is invulnerable to search-bots. Machine-to-machine queries can only be made by banks.
Interestingly, you can link your Deposit-Only Account number directly to your credit cards that have the highest unpaid balance or largest interest rate. This will draw down your most expensive debt the fastest way possible.
By informing your bank of your wish to do so.
Most people agree that keeping the one “how you receive money” database up to date is of paramount importance. Always remember to inform your bank of any changes in your public identifiers.
Banks are liable for any false information they send to the Greenlist. Payment Pathways is responsible for securing all bank-registrar digital signatures for every registrant. The Root Greenlist Registry can only be changed by a bank, and it never contains any information that can be used alone by fraudsters to debit any accounts containing funds.
That is an arrangement between you and your bank. Normally, you would have your Greenlist Deposit-Only Account receive the funds and have them “swept” into your regular depository bank account on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Some institutions would permit you to “sweep” your inbound funds into your brokerage, credit card accounts, etc. even if such accounts are located at other financial institutions.
In most cases, consumers prefer an email notification; however, fax and text-to-speech and SMS notifications are also offered by some institutions. Check with your bank to learn of their range of notification services.
Underlying account addresses can be changed by contacting your original registrar bank. If you wish to change your Public Payment Address (Deposit-Only Account number) associated with your Greenlist public identifiers (name, address, and phone number) to a different financial institution, that can be accomplished by having the new bank function as your registrar. For them to do that, they must contact your original bank and arrange for your original registration to be closed before re-assigning your Greenlist ID to another Deposit-Only Account. Your original bank will contact you and obtain your permission to withdraw their Greenlist Registration on your behalf. Only then can your second bank proceed with your new revised registration.
Payment Pathways supplies its bank-registrars with complete Regulation E insurance. At this time, Regulation E insurance is not available to registrars that serve as bank proxies. Examples of bank-authorized Proxy Registrars are telcos, ISPs, and wholesale accounting services firms such as ADP.
Payment Pathways will pay any monetary obligations banks must, by law, pay to consumers to compensate them for any suspected bank losses due to fraud that are discovered within sixty days. This payment to banks is immediate upon the banks’ notification to PPI.
Private financial information is never kept in the Greenlist, but instead, is maintained and protected by FDIC-insured banks, whose financial strength and stability are backed by the FDIC’s basic insurance amount of $2500,000 per depositor per insured bank. It is insured to be kept secure. This kind of “security-by-separation” is ironclad.
Our system has been developed by industry-leading bankers and payment-processing professionals based on an original invention of a team of visionaries, including Nobel Laureate Dr. Franco Modigliani, and its intellectual property rights have been asserted in China, India, E.U., and the U.S.A.
To minimize risk of fraud. Banks go to extreme measures before they designate an outside company as an “alliance partner” or operational sub-contractor. The PPI system is based on bank-level of institutional trust. The Greenlist system is based on all-party agreements that establish a “chain of liability”. Like all chains, its strength is only as strong as its weakest link.
Your FDIC-insured bank! Backed by the operational Regulation E insurance from Payment Pathways, Inc.
Put automatic fraud alerts for your identity with the three major credit bureaus in the 25 states where laws have legally obligated them to alert consumers whenever credit information is sought. This action also eliminates a substantial amount of junk mail consisting of credit card offerings which is a significant source of information required for identity theft today. There are numerous service providers willing to do this for you for a small fee — TrustedID, for example.