As Europe moves toward the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA)-wide implementation of Verification of Payee (VoP) by October 2025, payment service providers (PSPs), payment system operators (PSOs), and financial institutions across the region are looking to Pay.UK’s experience with its implementation of Confirmation of Payee in the UK, for guidance.
Our Confirmation of Payee Product Owner, Anu Raman, has been instrumental in this journey and recently shared our key learnings and insight at two industry forums:
featuring fellow industry experts from iPiD and Citibank.
During the sessions, Anu highlighted the success of Confirmation of Payee in the UK and subsequently the key strategies, challenges, and opportunities that can help Europe turn compliance into customer confidence. Here, we summarise the key takeaways from these industry conversations.
What is Confirmation of Payee?
Confirmation of Payee is our award-winning, account name-checking service that helps to reduce misdirected payments and provides greater assurance to end users in the UK that their payments are being transferred to, and collected from, the intended account holder. Having just celebrated its five-year anniversary in June, since 2020 the service has grown in repute and is now used by over 320 organisations, covering more than 99% of organisations initiating Faster Payments in the UK.
Our pioneering work on the service offers invaluable lessons, not just in meeting regulatory requirements, but in unlocking real value through fraud reduction and stronger customer trust.
Confirmation of Payee success
Accounting for a significant portion of the Faster Payment transactions in the UK, the six biggest banking groups – Barclays, NatWest Group, Santander, HSBC, Nationwide Building Society and Lloyds Banking Group – were all mandated to adopt Confirmation of Payee by June 2020.
The effectiveness of the overlay to reduce misdirected payments was quickly recognised, as too was its intrinsic ability to reduce instances of authorised push payment fraud. The customer experience of the payment journey also improved significantly, with simple confirmation cues, such as standardised messages or traffic-light indicators, helping users feel more confident when making payments.
As the value of Confirmation of Payee became clear, adoption of the service increased voluntarily beyond the original mandated participants. Now used by over 320 organisations initiating Faster Payments in the UK, the service’s widespread adoption is testament to its evolution from a regulatory requirement to a trusted and widely-embraced tool across the payments ecosystem.
Three pillars of success
Anu identified three pillars of activity from Pay.UK’s Confirmation of Payee journey that could also facilitate a successful VoP implementation:
- Standardisation – We created consistent technical and customer experience standards that ensured coherent messaging, matching logic, and user journeys across financial institutions. Europe can similarly benefit from shared frameworks that enable interoperability and clarity.
- Preparation and internal readiness – Treating Confirmation of Payee as a formal, disciplined project with defined milestones, robust testing, and investment in data cleansing, was critical to success. For Europe, this means acting now on data quality, refining matching algorithms, and preparing teams, like operations and customers services, to manage VoP, post-launch.
- Industry collaboration and communication – The UK’s success was underpinned by cross-industry working groups, coordinated testing environments, and a shared approach to educating customers. European PSPs should adopt the same collaborative spirit, aligning efforts to avoid confusion and maximise customer understanding.
Looking towards VoP implementation
The upcoming implementation of VoP across SEPA is more than a deadline – it is a chance for Europe to set new benchmarks for security, customer protection, and confidence in digital payments. Like Confirmation of Payee, it should become an inherent and unobtrusive part of all payment processes, so standard that customers do not even notice it, yet benefit from the assurance it provides.
As Europe enters the implementation phase, leveraging the Confirmation of Payee framework offers a smart path to scalable success. For those already working with cross-industry groups and establishing best-practice guidelines, the foundations are already in place.
Anu concluded: “The UK’s journey with Confirmation of Payee shows that success lies in standardisation, collaboration, and preparation – and to always keep the customer at the heart of the solution. It isn’t just about saying “yes” or “no”, it’s about building trust in every transaction.”
