Our Confirmation of Payee Product Owner, Anu Raman, recently joined a webinar conversation with Dutch supplier of Verification of Payee (VOP) and Confirmation of Payee solutions, Surepay, to discuss the successful adoption of Confirmation of Payee in the UK, and how PSPs can prepare for the implementation of VOP across Europe by October 2025.
During the webinar, which was attended by UK PSPs, fraud prevention specialists, compliance officers, and payments processing professionals, Anu and the Surepay representatives explored the topic of ‘PSPs and the path to EU VOP’, covering:
- How Confirmation of Payee has transformed payments in the UK
- Key lessons from the expansion of Confirmation of Payee
- The future of Confirmation of Payee.
Context
Anu first provided an overview of Confirmation of Payee, highlighting the account name-checking service’s purpose to help reduce misdirected payments and provide greater assurance to end users that their payments are being transferred to, and collected from, the intended account holder.
Since its launch in 2020, the service has continually demonstrated its value as an effective anti-fraud measure and has become a customary component of the payment process for end users. Indeed, in October 2022, the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) issued a mandate for in-scope PSPs to implement Confirmation of Payee by October 2024. Following successful expansion, today more than 300 organisations use the service, completing over 2 million checks each day.
Key lessons from Confirmation of Payee expansion
Anu later discussed lessons from the implementation of Confirmation of Payee that could be useful in the implementation of VOP. These included:
- UK’s role as an independent organisation at the centre of the UK payments ecosystem with a focus on delivering benefits to end users, was pivotal in onboarding PSPs to the Confirmation of Payee service.
- It is vital that PSPs understand what their roles and responsibilities are for implementing a service like Confirmation of Payee or VOP and should plan for implementation in ample time.
- Communication and awareness of the mandate and its implementation across all stakeholders was also a crucial factor to success. We engaged heavily with relevant PSPs and technology service providers (TSPs) to support them with meeting this legal obligation, and in turn, they were responsible for communicating with their internal teams and customers, including end users (both businesses and individuals).
The future of Confirmation of Payee
Looking to the future, Anu confirmed that the growth trajectory for Confirmation of Payee is extremely positive, and that Pay.UK has created a roadmap for its further development. A key focus of the roadmap is the interoperability of the service with other account name-checking services, like VOP, and we have already initiated the discovery phase of how to take Confirmation of Payee to Europe and beyond.
Anu said, “My conversation with Surepay was an excellent opportunity to talk about our success with the continued implementation of the Confirmation of Payee service. I hope to have provided some useful insights for European PSPs looking to join VOP later this year and look forward to collaborating with our European and global counterparts to expand Confirmation of Payee beyond the UK.”
