Snappt vs. ApproveShield: Which is Best For Your Property?

With online fraud marketplaces, tutorials, and how-to guides, and even paid fraud-as-a-service (FaaS), it’s easier than ever for fraudsters to come out on top. But property managers and landlords are fighting back with advanced fraud detection and income verification tools to prevent fraudsters from infiltrating their properties and wreaking havoc.

Two well-known options—Snappt and ApproveShield—are helping property management companies mitigate fraud and its consequences, like costly evictions, bad tenants, and potential reputational damage.

We’re exploring Snappt and ApproveShield, taking a deep dive into each platform’s key features, so you can decide which one best suits your needs.

Company Overviews

While both Snappt and ApproveShield offer verification services, they’re not identical products and services. Snappt detects fraudulent documents and verifies income and IDs, while ApproveShield is known mostly for its tenant screening services. Here’s more about how they differ.

Snappt

Snappt is a leading verification platform purpose-built for multifamily property managers and owners. It was founded in 2019 and quickly adopted AI to build AI-powered functionalities that help you identify forged documents—like bank statements and pay stubs—before you sign a lease with a fraudster.

The Snappt platform can detect thousands of anomalies on a document, and it can scan over 4,600 ID types from 200+ countries and territories. Paired with its innovative Fraud Forensics team and deep expertise, Snappt helps property managers get ahead of fraud.

Snappt also provides income verification through connected payroll and automated income calculation.

ApproveShield

Founded in 2016, ApproveShield serves over 500 communities and is dedicated to helping multifamily property owners with its tenant screening software, built to eliminate high-risk tenants before they lead to financial losses and become nightmare residents.

ApproveShield’s flagship applicant screening software includes “human-in-the-loop” oversight and a robust eviction and risk database. While this adds a layer of accuracy, it also means longer processing times for you and your applicants.

While ApproveShield offers identity, income, and employment verification, there’s no readily available information about these offerings to compare them to Snappt’s proven services.

Core Technology and Features

Both Snappt and ApproveShield are software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms with overlapping products and services, but there are a few distinct differences. Take a look at each platform’s key features and functionalities to see how they stack up against each other.

Snappt

Snappt is an AI-powered fraud detection and ID and income verification platform that gives property managers a robust catalog of checkpoints to combat fraud. It’s most recognized for these services:

Document fraud detection. Snappt uses AI trained on over 13 million documents and checks 10,000+ document features against a database of over 2,000 financial institutions to flag subtle and overt fraud on bank statements and other documents. It helps you to confirm income, verify authenticity, and deliver fast, accurate results. Plus, its Fraud Forensics team constantly updates tactic detection algorithms—all so you get an accurate pass/fail result in less than 10 minutes. 

Income verification. One of Snappt’s newer offerings, its income verification combines automated income calculation with payroll connections (powered by Argyle) to confirm income and employment in real time. Snappt connects with 90% of US payroll providers and uses Know Your Business checks to verify employment and income.

ID verification. Using advanced facial recognition and secure liveness detection, Snappt matches an applicant’s face to their government-issued ID. It runs over 30 security checks on more than 4,600 types of global IDs, looking for issues like expiration, barcode mismatches, and tampering. Results come back instantly, giving you a clear pass/fail decision along with a detailed analysis—all within 60 seconds.

Fraud forensics. Snappt is the only fraud detection company with a dedicated team that uncovers new threats daily, updates fraud patterns in real time, and verifies employer legitimacy. The team continuously improves features and algorithms to protect your portfolio, recently stopping payroll, inception, high-volume application, and subletting fraud.

ApproveShield

Property managers can run a few identity verifications on the ApproveShield platform—all of which are processed through its software and a real human verifying details to improve overall accuracy.

While the ApproveShield website lacks details about individual processes or technologies used, it does provide a list of verifications and protections included in ApproveShield Premier Screening. Here’s the complete list:

• Total fraud protection
• Identity verification
• Equifax credit report
• Fully verified criminal background
• Income and employment verification
• Real-time eviction data
• Rental history verification

ApproveShield is not a document fraud detection platform—its solution only checks a database of people, flagging those who have committed fraud or been evicted in the past.

What does that mean for property managers? Not all fraudulent behaviors appear in the results. The only way to truly prevent as many fraudulent applications as you can is to use a document fraud detection tool.

Integrations

Property management and leasing teams don’t need yet another disconnected or complicated tool to add to their tech stack. Integrations help connect your tools to create seamless data flows, so you spend less time switching between products or carrying over information from one system to the next.

Before you choose between Snappt and ApproveShield, consider how they’ll fit into your existing tech stack and which will simplify work vs. create more complexities.

Snappt

Snappt understands the value of a connected tech stack, which is why it was built with integrations in mind. 

Snappt has multiple integrations and partnerships to streamline and simplify property management:

• Entrata
• RealPage
• ResidentIQ
• ResMan
• Yardi Voyager
• Yardi Breeze

You can also create customizable workflows with Snappt’s API documentation.

ApproveShield

While ApproveShield doesn’t specifically name its integrations, the website claims to support six integration partnerships with top property management systems (PMS). Yardi lists ApproveShield as a partner, but integration information is limited beyond that. 

Security and Compliance

Security and compliance are paramount when handling sensitive applicant data. While both Snappt and ApproveShield deal with personal data, there is not sufficient information on ApproveShield’s side to confirm to what degree the company prioritizes security and compliance.

Snappt

Snappt is dedicated to security and privacy, which is why it prioritized achieving SOC 2 Type II compliance, meeting high data security and confidentiality standards. SOC 2 is a third-party certification that highlights Snappt’s commitment to customer data protection.

But Snappt goes beyond SOC 2, weaving industry best practices into the platform:

• It prioritizes applicant security through a proactive approach to preventing unauthorized access with role-based access controls
• Snappt uses data encryption to ensure security and requires Snappt employees to take training that helps maintain enhanced security standards
• The Snappt platform was built for FCRA compliance
• It complies with the Fair Housing Act to mitigate discrimination

ApproveShield

With limited information available, it’s unclear how ApproveShield handles and ensures data security and compliance. While it is SOC 2-compliant, anything beyond that is unclear.

Customer Experience and Support

You want a product that does the job and unmatched service for when you need a little extra support. A responsive and knowledgeable team to answer questions and make suggestions should be standard. 

Take a look at how Snappt and ApproveShield approach customer service and support.

Snappt

Snappt is more than a platform. With a dedicated account management team and a proactive customer success team, you get a true partner in fraud detection and income and identity verification.

And with a speedy onboarding process, you can start using the platform almost immediately, with full access to tailored support for the first 30 to 45 days.

Have a question? Need help with getting more value from Snappt? The customer success team is there to help or you can contact support anytime.

ApproveShield

ApproveShield doesn’t offer many insights into its customer support options, but customer reviews seem to be split. Some property management teams are raving fans, while applicants share overwhelmingly negative reviews. 

Taking a closer look at each group, ApproveShield shares its clients’ testimonials on the website—they praise the thoroughness of the screening process that results in lower skips and evictions. 

The applicants’ voice has a less favorable tone and can be found on BBB or Reddit. Common themes include a highly invasive process and a drawn-out approval timeline that results in lost housing opportunities. 

Real-World Results 

Where the rubber meets the road—actual results. Property managers care about lowering risk, bad debt, and eviction rates while making sure tenants pay rent on time. Snappt and ApproveShield both offer solutions to help.

Snappt

Snappt provides real impact to its customers, specifically mentioning results in accuracy, bad debt reduction, and BBB accreditation and rating on its website. 

• $515M+ bad debt avoided
• Over 2.8 million applicants processed
• 99.8% accuracy in document verification 
• 51% reduction in future bad debt
• A+ rating and accreditation from the BBB

Snappt also offers a savings calculator to help you estimate how much your business could save with Snappt.

ApproveShield

ApproveShield aims to reduce costs for its clients. While on-site client testimonials support this narrative, there aren’t any available numbers to provide an average or median figure for cost savings, percentage of fraud caught, or eviction rates of its clients. 

That said, ApproveShield does share an impressive stat: those screening with ApproveShield experience less than a 0.2% default rate. Any other results are found in testimonials and span time saved and lowered eviction rates, though there are no specific percentages. 

Final Verdict: Which Is Right for You?

Snappt stands out as a comprehensive solution for robust fraud detection and secure identity verification. With a remarkable 99.8% accuracy rate in fraud detection, Snappt significantly minimizes the risk of forged documents slipping through undetected.

The ID verification services offered by Snappt surpass ApproveShield by scanning a broader range of documents, empowering property managers to better protect their properties from fraud.

When you need assistance, Snappt’s dedicated customer support team is readily available to help you seamlessly integrate its software into your leasing process and address any questions you may have.

While ApproveShield is a viable option for tenant screening, it doesn’t offer document fraud detection, meaning bad tenants may still slip through.

Snappt and ApproveShield both offer solutions to protect your property, but the key difference? Snappt helps you vet people and their documents, while ApproveShield helps with one of these—the people. 

If your primary concern revolves around bolstering your defense against document and identity fraud concurrently—and streamlining applicant experience while you’re at it—Snappt is the top choice.

With a vast database of over 13 million scanned documents, its accuracy and effectiveness in catching fraudulent activities are noteworthy. Snappt’s user-friendly interface, SOC 2 compliance, and excellent customer support make implementation a snap. Want to learn more about Snappt? Check out the website.

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