I just got off the phone with Mark Roth, the CEO of OfferVault and AffiliCert. I asked him to pen a guest post to bring us all up to speed on AffiliCert’s progress. As most of you know, AffiliCert is attacking the problem of publisher fraud from the private sector. They hope that their efforts will lead to an industry of certified and verified publishers. Mark’s overview is below:

For those not familiar, Affilicert is an affiliate certification program, dedicated to combating fraud committed by affiliates in the CPA/Performance Marketing industry, and to facilitating the approval process for legitimate affiliates. We do this by providing the community of networks with a stream of legitimate affiliates who have been through our rigorous screening process.

STATUS

We are now in the final stages of development on the AffiliCert platform and expect to go live on February 22^nd. We have partnered with Payoneer a registered MasterCard Merchant Service Provider, which allows us to provide the most rigorous screening procedure in the Industry, including KYC (Know Your Customer), BSA (Bank Secrecy Act), AML (Anti-Money Laundering) and OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) and many other stringent checks to assure that only legitimate affiliates obtain an AffiliCert Certification. Additional checks include, phone verification, email and physical address verification, website verifications and many other checks. With the extensive and sophisticated fraud identification procedures we are employing, we are able to certify both US based and international affiliates.

Participating networks (there are over 50 networks so far) will receive an AffiliCert network login and gain access to certification data on our approved affiliates. Networks will be able to look up affiliates by name or ID# to check certification status and will also have access to daily/weekly lists of newly certified affiliates. This list may be used as a prospecting pool from which to recruit new affiliates

OUR VALUE

As the situation exists now, each network spends an enormous amount of time screening affiliate applications, only to turn away the vast majority as potentially fraudulent and not worth the risk to do business with. Affiliate managers’ time would be far better spent helping their existing affiliates to become more successful, therefore increasing the income of all parties involved.

AffiliCert aims to take the burden of screening largely off the hands of the networks, thus freeing up the affiliate managers time for more valuable tasks.

From the legitimate affiliates’ perspective, there are great benefits as well. Any affiliate getting started in the business knows all too well the frustrations of having their applications denied by one network after another. It’s really not their fault, but they are getting caught in the cross fire, collateral damage in the fight against fraud. Now with the emergence of AffiliCert, the legitimate affiliate will have a much easier time getting approved into any of our participating networks. There will be a nominal application fee, and of course they must pass the screening process, but once issued an AffiliCert ID, it will be smooth sailing. As an added benefit, each affiliate that becomes certified, will receive an AffiliateCert debit card, issued by Payoneer. If affiliates choose to recieve commission payments this way, the CPA networks can issue payments directly to their Affilicert debit card which can be used as a credit card or to take out cash at ATM’s at thousands of locations worldwide. US residents can even transfer their funds from their card, directly into their bank account. For international affiliates, this is hands down the quickest and easiest method to get paid.

Among the many networks participating in the AffiliCert program are MediaTrust, Unique Leads, Market Leverage, Neverblue, Rextopia, Revenue Street, Elite Clicks Media, Affiliateer and Affiliate venture Group.

We are excited to be launching on February 22^nd when we will begin taking affiliate applications. Fraudsters need not apply.