Last week Pay.UK announced that, in collaboration with NatWest, SurePay has contributed to HMRC with its CoP solution to make sure that the Covid-19 payments are delivered safely, at scale and to the right people.

Confirmation of Payee in the UK

SurePay developed a Confirmation of Payee solution to comply with all relevant UK rules and regulations. In the UK, Confirmation of Payee is now mandatory and implemented by the six biggest banking conglomerates. This service enables payers to verify that the payee’s name and sort code match so they can prevent transferring money to the wrong person or business, whether by intent (payment fraud) or unintentionally (misdirected payments).

Payment fraud has been on the rise in recent years, where specifically Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud is more common every year, leading to significant damages for banks, businesses and individuals. With APP fraud, a fraudster tricks someone into transferring money online, while impersonating a real and trusted individual or organisation as part of the scam. 

The Confirmation of Payee solution protects customers from falling victim to that specific type of fraud.  According to UK Finance data there were 122,437 cases of APP fraud in the UK in 2019 with losses hitting £456 million, up from £354 million in 2018. Financial providers returned about a quarter of losses - £116 million - to victims.

Bridget Meijer, Business Development Manager UK, commented: “We are on a mission to expand and innovate our services in the UK and across Europe, so we can continue to make online payments more personal, easy to use and even more secure. Our solution is best in class.

Stuart Kempster, NatWest said: “We do everything we can to keep our customers safe and secure and Confirmation of Payee plays an important role in this. We selected SurePay to support our delivery of Confirmation of Payee, because of their experience in the Dutch market and excellent understanding of complex name matching issues. They have worked closely with us to deliver good name-matching results and we look forward to building on our relationship as the CoP service develops.”

Proven and tested solution is now live

SurePay has already performed more than 8 million checks in the UK, averaging more than 100,000 checks everyday with a sub second response time. SurePay has successfully operated its solutions since 2017 and has performed more than 2 billion checks in the Netherlands already.

SurePay’s proven API solution allows Payment Service Providers (PSPs) to provide customers with real time check and feedback on the entered beneficiary details when making an online money transfer - a true Confirmation of Payee.

SurePay’s CoP solution features the following key components:

• a tried-and-tested name matching functionality;
• various options for data management;
• Open Banking connectivity; and
• Direct Corporate access.

The algorithm detects and interprets subtle differences between payee details entered by the payer and the payee details officially registered at the bank. The service aims to significantly reduce the number of payments made in error, prevent fraudulent transfers and provide users with peace of mind when making a credit transfer online. Most importantly, the algorithm will not interfere with correct payments because the entered details are verified instantly and the user experience is unaffected.