Social Security Administration Announces Initial Roll Out of New Electronic Consent Based Social Security Number Verification (eCBSV) Service for Financial Institutions or Their Service Providers

On June 7, 2019, the Social Security Administration (SSA) provided notice of an initial enrollment period for a new electronic “Consent Based Social Security Number (SSN) Verification Service,” called “eCBSV.” The fee-based service allows “permitted entities to verify an individual’s SSN based on the SSN holder’s signed consent.” Permitted entities, defined as “a financial institution or service provider, subsidiary, affiliate, agent, subcontractor, or assignee of a financial institution,” are required to have an employer identification number (EIN) and Dun and Bradstreet (D-U-N-S) number. Permitted entities will “be able to submit via an application programming interface fraud protection data to SSA for each verification request.”

How do I participate in the eCBSV program?

The SSA selected a limited number of organizations to participate in the first rollout of the eCBSV program.

The SSA will select a limited number of entities to participate during the first rollout of this service. According to the SSA, entities will be selected based upon the earliest date and time of the receipt by SSA of a fully completed application. In addition, the entities will be chosen from the following categories:

  1.  Financial institutions that fall above or below a transaction threshold
  2. A service provider, subsidiary, affiliate, agent, subcontractor, or assignee of a financial institution with an annual volume of transactions that fall above or below three separate thresholds

Enrollment began on July 17, 2019 and remained open until July 31, 2019. The service will be open to a “limited number of users” by June 2020, and will expand to additional users within six months. If selected, a permitted entity will receive a bill to pay a prorated portion of 50% of the fees associated with the program start-up. The fees will vary based on the number of entities selected and the number of annual transactions. While the amount of the fee is not final, entities that pay the initial start-up fees will have that amount credited to future transactions.

For more information on the eCBSV program, visit the SSA website.

If your organization didn’t make the cut for the first SSA rollout, but you would like a better SSN search, AmericanChecked offers a CBSV report. Our CBSV provides absolute validation of a person’s full name, social security number, date of birth and searches the death indicator list.