Talk:ChexSystems

Untitled
This article needs to be updated to include Fidelity National Information Services' purchase of eFunds in 2007. FIS is now the owner of ChexSystems.

- — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.10.119.99 (talk) 00:33, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Some external links are neccessary. Over 6 million customers are unbanked and ChexSystems prevents a majority of them from getting banked. The larger percentage (73%) of those unbanked are minorities. These slanted statistics deserve some external opinions on the site. At the minimum the chexvictims site needs to be added as its the major source of info for helping people and has been since 1999. The eFunds site is also required since that is the parent company of ChexSystems.

- 71.227.250.138 06:48, 25 January 2007 (UTC)


 * If you want to carry on a campaign, there are places for that. The purpose of an encyclopedia is not to make a point for your particular cause.  Montco 04:34, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


 * You are right, this isn't the place for a campaign. However, these three websites need to remain as links as they are links to the company, parent company, and the main antagonist to the company since it started. 71.227.250.138 05:14, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I am not deleting the parent company. And frankly, the statement "At the minimum the chexvictims site needs to be added as its the major source of info for helping people and has been since 1999." indicates a bias in including this.   Montco 05:48, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I've completely rewritten the article and there is no more bias in that statement than "The eFunds site is also required since that is the parent company of ChexSystems." Whatever perceived problem you have, you are obviously not familiar with this institution, its history in the past 17 years, or the major players involved. If you have a problem with this, you need to get a moderator that is familiar with the subject matter.  71.227.250.138 06:33, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Ha Ha! Sucker! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jzenman (talk • contribs) 10:15, 25 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Please note that the recent changes to this article better reflect what ChexSystems is and is edited by someone who actually knows.MnRaptor (talk) 20:58, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

POV issues
Does anyone else think there are company agents trying to change the point of view here? Editors changed it to look like marketing for Chex. Warren (talk) 13:57, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I read that pages on Wiki can be protected. Is that a good idea here? Just a thought. Warren (talk) 14:10, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Requests for page protection (abbreviated WP:RFPP) is the place to do that. However, in this case it's best simply to revert the disruption. I have reverted all changes back to the version of December 15. ~Amatulić (talk) 23:48, 9 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Got it. Thanks! Warren (talk) 00:29, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Promotional banner
Do any editors here feel that the promotional banner is still warranted? Warren (talk) 01:42, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
 * After re-reading the article, I removed the tag. I didn't see anything unambiguously promotional. ~Amatulić (talk) 12:47, 11 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Agreed, thanks Warren (talk) 20:46, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Update links
The link for their main site needs to be updated to www.chexsystems.com and added as an external link for users.

The real chexsystems site should be put in the external links. The page is confusing an doesnt point people to te right place. Their real site is www.chexsystems.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kermandez (talk • contribs) 00:17, 4 July 2013‎
 * I have updated the the link. Quick question are you User:Chexsystems?  GB fan 00:27, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

edit semi protected
Moved from my talk page to here. ~Amatulić (talk) 17:48, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

The text provided in the entry for ChexSystems is significantly flawed. Some of the errors are rather significant: "ChexSystems reports only contain negative information. In comparison to traditional CRAs, ChexSystems does not provide a risk analysis score like the FICO score; therefore many consumers who have kept positive banking relationships for as many as 30 years may have their accounts closed and be blacklisted from opening new accounts based on a single banking error."

1.) ChexSystems has both positive and negative data. This data includes things like check printing, inquiries for DDA accounts, inquiries for non-DDA accounts and certainly there is negative data such as accounts closed for abuse and/or fraud as well as bounced checks. To characterize the data as ONLY negative is grossly incorrect.

2.) ChexSystems does provide a risk score and has done so for over 14 years. There are various flavors of those scores and they can include different data sources as appropriate. In fact ChexSystems created the scores specifically to recognize that negative behavior on a consumer's file does not and should not always be a barrier to obtaining an account. Rather a consumers entire behavioral profile should be considered and with that consideration consumers with negative data, offset with positive data, can score well and be accepted on a purely score based decision.

3.) It is grossly inaccurate that anyone is blacklisted for any single banking error. While it is accurate to imply that consumers who have been reported to ChexSystems as having committed fraud will have a harder time opening up new accounts, it is completely inaccurate to suggest a single error will blacklist anyone. Banks even will open new accounts for consumers who have had accounts closed at the same bank provided any monies owed are repaid. Again the characterization is completely false. Reference link: http://www.fisglobal.com/products-riskfraudcompliance-riskmanagement-qualifileaccountdecisioning

The link to ChexSystems offerings is no longer valid but could be replaced with: http://www.fisglobal.com/products-riskfraudcompliance-riskmanagement — Preceding unsigned comment added by MnRaptor (talk • contribs) 17:29, 21 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I changed some of the wording in the Criticism section to be more in line with what the cited source says. In particular, the source does not say that ChexSystems contains only negative data, but rather that the mere appearance of someone's name in ChexSystems is regarded as negative by banks. That source, which appears to be neutral and reliable, even provides an example of someone "landing in ChexSystems" for "bouncing a check or two", and that the mere presence in ChexSystems is sufficient grounds for denying a new account &mdash; basically functioning as a blacklist. The link you provided does nothing to indicate that the paragraph (as it currently stands after my edit) is inaccurate. A neutral third party source such as the one cited in the article is far preferable over assertions from the primary source.


 * I have updated the service offerings link as you suggested. ~Amatulić (talk) 19:02, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

This entry still has significant errors. I agree that you want to have an impartial informative narrative, but honestly the text here is incorrect and certainly slanted and in some cases completely wrong. If you read the cited sources, you can find that they are repeating, in some cases verbatim, from one or two sources. Reading those sources independently you get a tone from the articles that is decidedly one sided.

ChexSystems started over 40 years ago in the Minneapolis/St Paul area. Originally local merchants came together to maintain a list of consumers who were writing checks on closed accounts. The idea here was to protect merchants from taking a check that was going to bounce and thus loose revenue. As this list grew over time and expanded, banks wanted to use this listing as well to screen consumers who have had bad behavior to avoid losing money themselves. Seemed fair since it was easy for consumers to work the system and one of the most famous of these was Frank Abignale Jr.

As the data grew other consumer data was added including checking account inquiry history, check printing history, bounced check history, paid account closure history, paid bounced check history etc. banks became more competitive with each other and ChexSystems developed a scoring solution. This solution deployed to the market in 1999 used the consumer's behavior to rank consumers according to the risk of an account being closed by the bank for abuse or fraud. Abuse and fraud can have similar situations but fraud is an abuse of an account that rises to the level of fraud. A few of the 38 reasons banks close accounts are: Depositing empty envelopes in an ATM Over Drafting and not paying the money back Writing checks on a closed account stolen ID Fraudulent account information

It was clear that with as much as 20% of the population having some sort of closure behavior on file, ChexSystems created their score to allow banks to approve consumers EVEN WITH closures on file. In fact, most banks target 90% or more approvals and that means quite a few people with closures on file will score high enough to qualify for an account. It is even possible for a consumer to score very high even with a closure on file because the ChexSystems database DOES HAVE POSITIVE data. The most recent version of the ChexSystems "QualiFile Score" returns a score on 95% or more of the US population and this would not be possible if it were only a negative data source.

Some banks attempt to approve as much as 98% of the account applicants knowing full well that in the highest risk score ranges as much as 80% of all their losses will happen. Further analysis has shown that in the first 90 days of a new account as much as 30% of all closures will happen and when they do the bank loses.

I know it isn't good practice to allow a partisan entry, but it also isn't good practice to source material that is also partisan. It's also not good practice to cite multiple sources when they are all themselves sourced from only one or two biased reports. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MnRaptor (talk • contribs) 20:38, 9 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia can only report based on the available sources. Your characterization of such sources as being all based on "one or two biased reports" is just your characterization. The source I referred to in my previous comment is hardly biased or partisan. A primary source is going to be partisan, by definition. What a primary source may claim about itself certainly can be reported in the article, but any claims from a primary source should not be given more weight than independent secondary sources. Why don't you start with a specific passage and propose new wording? ~Amatulić (talk) 01:05, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Edits to tone
I have made some general edits to move the tone of the article to a more encyclopedic one, as it previously was bordering on being promotional. This included removing a list of specific products offered as well as removing the names of several other companies from the introductory paragraph. (Competitors are mentioned at the end of the article, and it is sufficient to know the field of business the company is in; it's not necessary to list several similar businesses.) Also, lots of occurrences of the company name were removed, since it is usually obvious by context. I tried not to alter the substance of the article or change its balance. Roches (talk) 02:10, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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External links modified
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I have just modified 2 one external links on ChexSystems. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added tag to http://www.fisglobal.com/products-riskfraudcompliance-riskmanagement
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