Bottomline launches Confirmation of Payee to stop payment fraud and error

Bottomline (NASDAQ:EPAY), a leading provider of financial technology that makes business payments simple, smart and secure, today announced the latest cloud-based Confirmation of Payee (CoP) service for UK based banks.

The new overlay service became mandated by the UK’s Payment Systems Regulator in 2020 for the six largest banking groups in the UK. Any other eligible bank or building society that may be considering CoP, because of the risks associated with payment mis-directions or Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud, can apply to Pay.UK, which owns the CoP service.

Confirmation of Payee can help eligible banks and building societies give payers greater assurance that they are sending their payments to the intended recipients, and help avoid payments being accidentally or fraudulently misdirected. For any new beneficiary, the technology performs a real-time account name check against the payee account. As an overlay service, CoP can support payments made by Faster Payment, CHAPS and Bacs-originated credits.

“Authorised Push Payment fraud is the fastest category of fraud in our industry with £456m losses last year,” said Ed Adshead-Grant, general manager and director of payments at Bottomline Technologies. “With this new SaaS-based service, we can have any eligible bank or building society quickly up and running with CoP on their accounts to ensure they remain competitive in the role of trusted guardian as well as reducing the risk of fraudulent APP activity.”

Brian Cunnington, CoP Product SME at Pay.UK commented: “We are delighted to see Confirmation of Payee now making a difference in the UK payments environment. The new service offers protection for consumers through the account name checking service, reducing errors and fraudulent misdirection of funds.”