In 2020 the Confirmation of Payee (CoP) service was launched in UK to help reduce fraud and misdirected payments.
Confirmation of Payee helps protect consumers and businesses from certain types of fraud and misdirected payments by letting them know if the account name they have entered matches the account name of the recipient.
The Confirmation of Payee service seeks to give businesses and consumers greater assurance that they are sending payments to the intended recipient.
Whilst not a silver bullet, the implementation of Confirmation of Payee is expected be an effective way of combatting Authorised Push Payment Scams (e.g. where a fraudster tricks their victims into willingly making a large bank transfer to them).
Confirmation of Payee also helps to avoid payments being sent to the wrong account due to ‘fat fingers’ (keyboard errors) when we type in somebody’s Sort Code and Account Number.
Six months scorecard
Six months after the (extended) regulator imposed implementation deadline for the mandated banks, Pay.UK report that:
A significant number of non-directed PSPs have joined the CoP service since launch and over 1 million CoP requests are now being sent per day.
Work on CoP Phase 2 is progressing well and will focus on enabling ubiquitous access for all account holding PSPs that choose to participate.
Pay.UK
With the number of accredited CoP PSP’s, matching rates and a roadmap to ubiquity yet to be publicly announced it is difficult assess the level of success CoP has had in reducing payment fraud.
However, it looks promising as back in April Lloyds were reporting an impressive start to CoP success:
Safer payments need service ubiquity
Following two very nervous payments over the past couple of months – one to HMRC and one to a company – a ubiquitous and always on Confirmation of Payee service cannot come soon enough.
Making payments and having to click a number of ‘scam check’ / liability boxes without the comfort of Confirmation of Payee checks puts the payer in an increasingly difficult and vulnerable position.
Don’t get caught out
Without the need for a disclaimer (as I’m not involved in the webinar) why not register for Bottomline’s “Confirmation of Payee: Don’t get caught out” webinar on the 12 January?
Bottomline promise that the webinar with UK Finance will cover:
- What is the latest update on Pay.UK’s Confirmation of Payee rollout?
- What are the implications of a phase 1 bank joining now or waiting for the phase 2 roll-out?
- Where does the liability fall with APP fraud and CoP?What should I consider when looking at vendors?How do I get started?
Register: Confirmation of Payee: Don’t get caught out.
More on CoP
Link to the original CoP briefing from Northey Point: Confirmation of Payee briefing.