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AFD Software

Bank Verification

Bank validation and bank card data validation help ensure payments are successful, minimise transaction failure and fraud whilst meeting strict financial compliance and best practices.

Fast, accurate account number and sort code data entry makes checkouts, payment processing and Direct Debit setup a smooth process.

Features

  • Real-time bank validation
  • Real-time bank card data validation
  • fast, accurate account number and sort code checks

Benefits

  • Help ensure accurate bank data
  • Speed up accurate bank data entry
  • Minimise failed Direct Debits
  • Remove deliberate errors

Pricing

£0.02 a transaction

Service documents

Request an accessible format
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at joel.miller@afd.co.uk. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 13

Service ID

4 9 5 5 6 4 8 8 5 6 1 2 4 2 6

Contact

AFD Software Joel Miller
Telephone: 01624811709
Email: joel.miller@afd.co.uk

Service scope

Software add-on or extension
Yes, but can also be used as a standalone service
What software services is the service an extension to
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems
Enterprise Relationship Management (ERP) systems
Website forms and Checkouts
Patient Administration Systems (PAS)
Student Management Information Systems (MIS)
D365
GMS
FMS
In summary, any software that allows addresses to be entered
Cloud deployment model
Hybrid cloud
Service constraints
No, our service runs 24/7 365.
System requirements
No system requirements. Only requirement is a license from AFD

User support

Email or online ticketing support
Email or online ticketing
Support response times
15 minute response target time

Helpdesk staffed Monday - Friday 8:30 - 17:30

Outside normal working hours emails to support are monitored each night 9-10 PM. At weekends and bank holidays (except Christmas Day) the service is extended further to additional monitoring 10-11 AM and 4-5 PM. Any urgent support requests are handled straight away (within the monitored periods) while others are held to the next working day. This service is primarily designed for AFD customers with 24/7 operations or those needing to conduct out of hours maintenance operations.
User can manage status and priority of support tickets
No
Phone support
Yes
Phone support availability
9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
Web chat support
No
Onsite support
Yes, at extra cost
Support levels
Two levels of support available:

1. General SLA, Monday-Friday 8:30-17:30 with periodic out of office monitoring.

2. 24/7 SLA, fully monitored support service 24/7.

Option 1
included with AFD licence cost

Option 2
£5,000 Ex VAT per annum

All customers are appointed an account manager who has access to AFD's support team to escalate issues if required.

Cloud support engineers are also available if required.
Support available to third parties
Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

Getting started
User documentation

Free test access for development purposes

Remote demonstration

Remote support setup available

Onsite training available

More information can be found at https://www.afd.co.uk/developers/
Service documentation
Yes
Documentation formats
  • HTML
  • PDF
End-of-contract data extraction
No data to extract.

AFD does not hold customers data.

We can if requested delete the customers name and contact details off our CRM system.
End-of-contract process
At the end of the contract, access to the AFD solutions that have been licensed under the contract are no longer available.

Using the service

Web browser interface
No
Application to install
No
Designed for use on mobile devices
Yes
Differences between the mobile and desktop service
As our solutions are an API service there is no difference between mobile and desktop.
Service interface
No
User support accessibility
None or don’t know
API
Yes
What users can and can't do using the API
A serial number and password are required to access the API, these can be obtained via the EVAL section on the website or by contacting the team at AFD.

Once you have these credentials you can start making calls against our hosted service via API.

AFD’s bank validation API can be flexibly deployed in a host of environments, installed, or hosted.
Plug-ins for popular platforms such as Magento, Shopify, Salesforce, D365 and AFD Robot provide a range of developer-free integrations.

Changes can be made through the API to return the required data depending on each requirement.

API can be accesses through HTTPS protocol.
API documentation
Yes
API documentation formats
  • HTML
  • PDF
API sandbox or test environment
Yes
Customisation available
Yes
Description of customisation
Fully bespoke solution that can be adapted by our development team to fit our solutions into users systems and their specific requirements.

Scaling

Independence of resources
We have a highly available solution with multiple load balance solutions.

Load balancing across two different servers in two different availability zones.

As needed we can manually increase the amount of nodes to handle user demand, we continually monitor resource availability to determine if and when we need to increase the amount of nodes.

To date, using our current infrastructure, we have not had challenges serving over 6,000 customer and their millions of requests each year.

Analytics

Service usage metrics
Yes
Metrics types
We can provide the number of lookups completed.
Reporting types
  • Regular reports
  • Reports on request

Resellers

Supplier type
Reseller providing extra features and support
Organisation whose services are being resold
BACS

Staff security

Staff security clearance
Staff screening not performed
Government security clearance
None

Asset protection

Knowledge of data storage and processing locations
Yes
Data storage and processing locations
United Kingdom
User control over data storage and processing locations
Yes
Datacentre security standards
Managed by a third party
Penetration testing frequency
At least once a year
Penetration testing approach
Another external penetration testing organisation
Protecting data at rest
  • Physical access control, complying with another standard
  • Encryption of all physical media
Data sanitisation process
Yes
Data sanitisation type
  • Explicit overwriting of storage before reallocation
  • Deleted data can’t be directly accessed
Equipment disposal approach
In-house destruction process

Data importing and exporting

Data export approach
Users do not have data to export.

We can provide monthly usage figures (number of lookups) that we can send out.
Data export formats
CSV
Data import formats
CSV

Data-in-transit protection

Data protection between buyer and supplier networks
TLS (version 1.2 or above)
Data protection within supplier network
TLS (version 1.2 or above)

Availability and resilience

Guaranteed availability
We can provide SLA's on request based on requirement.
Approach to resilience
We have a highly available service that load balances between at least two servers and can access more as needed. Continually monitor available resource and can manually scale as required.

Hosted across two availability zones (two separate data zones) to provide further resilience.

A secondary (seperate) data centre is also available as a fail over.
Outage reporting
Email alerts will confirm email outages.

We monitor our traffic and will notify customers in the rare event of an outage.

Identity and authentication

User authentication needed
Yes
User authentication
Username or password
Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels
Customer only have access via API to lookup or search addresses, there is no customer access to management interfaces and support channels via API.

Customer Support can be reached separately via phone or email if required.
Access restriction testing frequency
At least once a year
Management access authentication
  • Dedicated link (for example VPN)
  • Username or password

Audit information for users

Access to user activity audit information
Users contact the support team to get audit information
How long user audit data is stored for
At least 12 months
Access to supplier activity audit information
Users contact the support team to get audit information
How long supplier audit data is stored for
Less than 1 month
How long system logs are stored for
At least 12 months

Standards and certifications

ISO/IEC 27001 certification
No
ISO 28000:2007 certification
No
CSA STAR certification
No
PCI certification
No
Cyber essentials
No
Cyber essentials plus
No
Other security certifications
No

Security governance

Named board-level person responsible for service security
Yes
Security governance certified
No
Security governance approach
Following GDPR guidelines.

Ongoing training for staff.

Working towards ISO 27001 best practices.
Information security policies and processes
AFD Corporate Security policy which includes reporting structure and advice for all staff on how to maintain best practice for Information Security.

Reporting of any data breaches to Operations Team, then Operations Manager then to General Manager

Reporting of any security instances with fast resolution to Operations team, then Operations Manager then General Manager

Responding to customer requests by Admin team.

Responding to FOI requests by Admin team and General Manager

We ensure policies are followed with regular policy review and training within appraisal stucture.

Operational security

Configuration and change management standard
Supplier-defined controls
Configuration and change management approach
We track new features and changes using an issue tracking management tool to ensure that they are reported and marked when complete.
Vulnerability management type
Supplier-defined controls
Vulnerability management approach
Potential threats are assessed via monitoring and tracking services, allows us to know if something goes down and when.

Can deploy patches to the service if required within a day of having a fix. Also have a standard quarterly update procedure.

Information about potential threats from trusted online sources - The Register and ARS Technica.

We have access to the Cisco Umbrella Threat Report.
Protective monitoring type
Supplier-defined controls
Protective monitoring approach
Potential compromises are identified via extensive logging of our service, we can read the logs to identify compromises.

Upon recognizing compromises the customer affected is notified and we work to provide a fix ASAP.

SIMP - security incident management process that we follow.

Time to respond to Incidents is based on their risk, impact and severity rather than a set time for all.
Incident management type
Supplier-defined controls
Incident management approach
Working towards ISO27001.

We do have pre-defined processes (SIMP).

Incidents are reported via email or phone.

Incident reports are provided via email.

Secure development

Approach to secure software development best practice
Supplier-defined process

Public sector networks

Connection to public sector networks
No

Social Value

Fighting climate change

Fighting climate change

In summer 2020 we doubled the capacity of our solar installation at the AFD Group HQ, Mountain View Innovation Centre (MVIC). By additionally investing in three Tesla Powerpacks later in the year (making this the Isle of Man’s biggest battery storage installation), to store the energy we generate, we expect to become completely self-sufficient in clean, green energy for twenty-four hours a day for around six months of the year.Between April and September each year, we anticipate that the solar panels will be running MVIC by day, at the same time as charging our Tesla Powerpacks so that we can still utilise the energy when the sun goes down. From October through to March, on average 33% of the required power should still be carbon emission-free (more in a sunnier winter and spring!).

Since the panels went live, AFD has saved over 117 tonnes of CO2, which is the equivalent of 3,492 trees planted. (This is in addition to the more than 4000 physical trees that have already been planted around Mountain View!)

As well as having the largest solar electricity generator and energy storage system on the Isle of Man, AFD’s staff electric car scheme brings green motoring to over a third of the Isle of Man team. An average petrol or diesel car will produce 411 grams of CO2 per mile, so AFD’s electric fleet is saving 39 tonnes of CO2 per year!

In addition to the green energy initiatives, environmental waste is kept to a minimum by utilising technology. Electronic accounting minimises paper use and fast electronic software distribution is used by most of our customers. Where CDs are required they are manufactured to order and our waste-stream is minimised by extensive recycling – including the office tea-bags!
Covid-19 recovery

Covid-19 recovery

During the pandemic, where people, especially the highly vulnerable, were asked to stay within their homes, delivery services became vital. To maximise the efficiency of these already stretched services and ensure vital supplies reach those in need, having accurate contact data – name, address, sometimes email and phone number too – is essential.

For nearly 40 years, AFD Software has been developing and maintaining solutions that allow contact data to be validated at the point of entry and cleansed. Our solutions help ensure that order processing is fast, details are stored in the correct format and most importantly at this time, that goods are delivered accurately. Perhaps there has never been such a critical time for data accuracy.

In an interview for a recent edition of Postcode News, Val Hayden, Patient Administration System & Data Quality Manager at The Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust, described the importance of AFD’s solutions to the Health Sector: “Staff and patients alike benefit from faster data entry as time can be better spent on making patients feel comfortable and providing the correct level of care as opposed to filling out and doublechecking each part of their address. Storing data in the correct format means that addresses are more easily searchable, retrievable and reportable.”

Contact data validation provided by AFD is allowing the NHS to more efficiently process essential patient calls and admissions when staff time is even more precious at this moment than usual; it is allowing retailers to continue to provide goods via online services that can’t be bought in shops; and it is allowing supermarkets to get food to people’s homes. All without wasting valuable time and resource looking for the right address.
Tackling economic inequality

Tackling economic inequality

Annually since 1998, every member of staff at AFD has been invited to nominate a charity to receive a donation on their behalf from AFD.Staff and director nominated donations to hundreds of charities over the last six years have exceeded £7 million, sending vital funds to support the lives of those who need it most.

The AFD business is founded on objectives which recognise its role in society – local, national and international – and takes an active role at all levels. In just one initiative, at the end of each year in November or December, AFD holds its Annual Charity Event which celebrates staff-nominated donations to a range of charities, with each annual event typically celebrating AFD donations in excess of £1M per annum. These donations go to support a wide range of local, UK and international charities, including those involved in medical care and research, disaster relief, youth work and work amongst those with disabilities.
Equal opportunity

Equal opportunity

AFD Software is committed to encouraging equality, diversity and inclusion among our workforce, and eliminating unlawful discrimination.

The aim is for our workforce to be truly representative of all sections of society and our customers, and for each employee to feel respected and able to give their best.

The organisation – in providing services is also committed against unlawful discrimination of customers or the public.
Wellbeing

Wellbeing

Managing the various habitats that both wildlife rely on and the
community benefit from is an important part of the role. AFD's Head Office is filled with plants that the four onsite beehives pollinate,
designated “No Mow” areas of grass are left for specific periods to provide bees and other pollinators with more nectar from wildflowers, planting wildflower seeds and adding bird boxes to promote a diverse range of wildlife. [you can usually find current photos on the home page of mvic.im.]

Spending time in green spaces and nature improves our mental and
physical health. Both staff and the local community are encouraged
to enjoy walks on the paths around the site, taking in the fresh air,
stunning views, and feeling better for it.

Pricing

Price
£0.02 a transaction
Discount for educational organisations
No
Free trial available
Yes
Description of free trial
Full access to our range of API based data validation solutions for non commercial use.
Link to free trial
https://www.afd.co.uk/try-it/

Service documents

Request an accessible format
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at joel.miller@afd.co.uk. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.