Starting this October, whenever your customers creates a GBP payment run, all Payment Service Providers using the UK Faster Payment System will need to perform a check on the payee's name to ensure it matches the account details based on the sort code and account number. This requirement aims to help prevent payments from being accidentally sent to the wrong account or maliciously misdirected. This process is known as Confirmation of Payee (CoP).
Effective:
- 28 October 2024 on Sandbox
- 29 October 2024 on Live
Payment Run and Payments API Endpoint Summary
CoP is only available for UK-domiciled accounts that use the UK domestic payment scheme of Faster Payments.
To support CoP, we made significant changes to the payment run API endpoints and the payment run lifecycle. Below is a summary of these changes:
Create a Payment Run API endpoint updates
When a user creates a payment run in Faster Payments, they must specify the type
of beneficiary account, which can be either PERSONAL
or BUSINESS
. The state of the payment run will transition to an interim state of QUEUED
instead of PENDING_CONFIRMATION
.
In this state, a CoP check is performed on the payee details for each payment in the run. The HTTP 200 response
response of this endpoint will return a new object called validationsOutcomes
, containing the status of the matching performed (e.g. EXACT_MATCH, CLOSE_MATCH or NO_MATCH) and the reasonCode
. A list of the reason codes can be found here.
Once the CoP results are returned, the payment runs state will transition to PENDING_CONFIRMATION
.
Payments Run states updates
To accommodate the changes for CoP, we have made updates to the states within the payment run process:
- Removing the
VERIFYING_REQUIREMENTS
and CREATED
states.
- We are introducing the
QUEUED
state: This reflects the asynchronous nature of the payment run creation is an asynchronous process. This status indicates that the payment run is in the process of being validated. One of the validation steps being the CoP checks for every payment line within the payment run.
Payments states updates
To add more visibility and to align the payment statuses with the payment run, we have made the below changes:
- Removing the
SUBMITTED
and CREATED
state from the Payment Run.
- Adding:
QUEUED
PENDING_CONFIRMATION
EXECUTING
AWAITING_FUNDS
Get payment run endpoints
The get a payment run and get payment runs endpoints have been updated to reflect the removal of old states and the addition of new ones. We have also included CoP results in a the new object validationOutcomes
New Update a Payment Run API endpoint
We have introduced a new API endpoint for updating a payment run, allowing users to modify the payee details of individual payments within the run. Based on the CoP results, this functionality enables users to edit specific payments without needing to cancel and re-create the entire payment run.
Updating a payment run can be done by a user with a Creator role and will help the user with a Controller role to approve the payment run.
More information about roles can be found here.
Payment Run Authorisation UI Component
The Payment Run Authorisation Component has been updated to display the CoP results next to each payment so that the user with a Controller role can further verify the payee details.
The payment run can be cancelled at any time if the CoP results do not meet the required criteria
Payment Run lifecycle
The payment run lifecycle has been updated accordingly to explain the new overview states:
Summary of Action required
Migrate your application to start handling:
- The create a payment run endpoint now requires the type to be specified as either PERSONAL or BUSINESS when creating GBP payments.
- The new updated states related to Payment Run statuses and the Payment Run line statuses
- Accept the update response with the CoP results (
validationOutcomes
)on the below:
- Webhook events:
- Payment Run Update
- Payment Update
- UI Components:
- Payment Run Auth Component
- API endpoints:
- POST/payment_runs
- GET/payment_runs
- GET/payment_runs/{payment_run_id}
- Optionally use the Patch a payment run endpoint to edit Payee details based on CoP results
This will help prevent any disruptions to your integration.
More information, along with the YAML file of the changes, will be provided to you in the coming days.
If no action is taken
If no action is taken, your application wouldn't be able to handle the updated responses when creating a payment run resulting to your users not being able confirm the run.