Confirmation of Payee
Confirmation of Payee is an account name checking service designed to help reduce misdirected payments, and provides greater assurance that payments are being sent and collected from the intended account holder for UK domestic payments. Since its launch in 2020, the service has become a utility service that customers expect to see when making a payment to an account they have never previously paid before.
There are 85+ organisations who have implemented CoP with over 1.7m CoP checks completed every day. The number of participating firms that have joined the service since its launch and the Payment System Regulator (PSR) mandating almost 400 organisations to join CoP by October 2024 speaks to the value of the service and its importance as an anti-fraud tool. You can find out more about PSR SD17 here.
How Confirmation of Payee works
Confirmation of Payee allows an account name to be checked (including a personal and business account indicator) before initiating or collecting a payment.
CoP is an API-based peer-to-peer service, with no central infrastructure in place.
Participating in Confirmation of Payee
An organisation can join Confirmation of Payee either directly or through an Aggregator.
Direct model
- To join the Confirmation of Payee service, organisations must be FCA or NCA regulated and authorised to perform payment service activities.
- The organisation must be an account holding PSP that has customers (personal or business) reachable by a sort code and account number.
- Organisations that do not own their own sort code, but offer accounts addressable by Secondary Reference Data (SRD).
If an organisation meets these requirements, they can either build their CoP solution in-house, or through a third-party CoP solution provider meeting Pay.UK’s requirements.
Aggregator model
Content to be provided by November 2023.
If you are looking to onboard via either of the above methods, please first contact us at CBDO@wearepay.uk.
Payer Name Verification
Payer Name Verification (PNV), reaps further benefits to those offered by Confirmation of Payee (CoP). Available to our existing CoP customers, this supplementary service allows organisations to perform account name checking before setting up or amending Bacs Direct Debit payments. PNV therefore serves to ensure that payments are collected from the correct account number, reducing the risk, and subsequent associated costs of misdirected payments.
Both customers and end users will benefit from improved first-time set-up rates as well as lower rejection rates. The service will also help to reduce Direct Debit fraud when setting up new Direct Debit Instructions, as well as the risk of Direct Debit indemnity claims.
If you are interested in learning more about Payer Name Verification, please contact us at CBDO@wearepay.uk.
