Overview
This feature will be made available in Sandbox, as from Wednesday 18th September 2024 for UK-based programmes only.
What is a Confirmation of Payee?
Confirmation of Payee (CoP) is a service used to verify the account details of a payment beneficiary (payee) with their bank or Payment Service Provider (PSP) before making a UK Faster Payment. Essentially, it acts as an "account name checking service" to help prevent payments from being accidentally sent to the wrong account or maliciously misdirected.
If the account details are confirmed, your application end-users will have greater assurance that a wire transfer payment will reach the correct account.
CoP helps address certain types of APP scams, by introducing another hurdle for fraudsters and gives effective warnings about the risks of sending payments to an account where the name does not match. This feature is designed to act as a fraud prevention tool, helping to partially mitigate risks associated with APP fraud by ensuring that the payee’s name matches the account information provided by the payer.
CoP is only available for UK-domiciled accounts that use the UK domestic payment scheme of Faster Payments.
The Confirmation of Payee feature is currently relevant for embedders on the Cards and Wire Transfers programme, with Identities that hold GBP Managed Accounts for use with Managed Cards.
If your embedded finance programme supports Outgoing Wire Transfers (OWTs) in GBP to third parties:
- You, as the embedder, can decide whether to allow or cancel an OWT created by your end-users.
- For any OWTs you approve, you are required to display the CoP result to your end-users before they confirm the payment.
When creating an OWT in GBP using a Beneficiary ID or the one-time payment flow, Weavr will perform a CoP check and return the results in the response payload. The results will indicate whether the account name and type you provided match the actual account holder’s name and account type. The CoP result will show as Match, Close Match or No Match.
Based on the CoP results retrieved, Identities should be given the option to either:
- Cancel the payment so that it cannot be completed, or
- Proceed with the payment by confirming the OWT created.
In case you (as Embedder) pass the results to the End User, please check the Design recommendations here.
Please refer to our step-by-step guide to create an Outgoing Wire Transfer with a Confirmation of Payee check.