A name-matching service which helps to stop people mistakenly sending payments to the wrong person or a scammer has reached the milestone of two billion checks having been carried out, according to payments operator Pay.UK.
Confirmation of Payee (CoP) was launched in 2020 and acts as an extra layer of protection when people are transferring money.
It is designed to help reduce misdirected payments and provide assurance that payments are being sent to the intended account holder.
The initiative prompts banking customers to verify that the name they put in to a payment request matches the name on the account receiving the payment.
If the names do not match, the customer is alerted and informed of the risks of going ahead with a payment when a match cannot be confirmed.
In some cases, the customer may have simply accidentally put in the wrong details.
In others, something more sinister could be going on and a mismatch may happen due to the intended recipient actually being an impersonation scammer.
Fraudsters will often pose as legitimate organisations or claim to be someone they are not to try to trick people into transferring cash.
More than 100 organisations have implemented CoP since its launch.
Kate Frankish, chief business development officer and anti-fraud lead at Pay.UK, operator of the UK’s retail payments system, said: “Two billion checks is not only a significant milestone, it provides unequivocal evidence on the key role CoP plays in protecting customers from becoming victims of fraud.
“The service has been instrumental in reducing fraud and misdirected payments. As we move forward, we remain committed to developing innovative solutions to stay ahead of fraudsters and protect end-users in the ever-changing digital and payments landscape.
“October this year will see the Payment System Regulator’s (PSR) new mandatory reimbursement framework for APP (authorised push payment) fraud put into action, which will change the way consumers are reimbursed when fraud is committed against them.
“The sending bank is liable to refund the victim within five days and the receiving bank is then liable to refund 50% to the sending bank. This regulation has driven the focus on ways to prevent fraud in the first case, of which CoP is one of the multi-layered solutions in the market.
“CoP has played a significant role in reducing fraud and misdirected payments, and we remain committed to developing innovative solutions to stay ahead of fraudsters and protect end-users in the ever-changing digital and payments landscape.”