The Nordic Payment Council (NPC) has now published the final version of their own rulebook for the CoP scheme. Through harmonised standards amongst the five Nordic countries, the rulebook helps to ensure successful implementation for the entire region, as well as making the countries more adaptable in case of any further changes to instant payments for Europe in the future.
The purpose
The general purpose of a Confirmation of Payee check is to be used prior to initiating a payment to confirm the correctness of the Payee and by that contribute to a higher quality and more efficient payment process. It can prevent some part of both misdirected and fraudulent payments as well as reduce the number of rejected and returned payments. In the end this can contribute to a better Customer experience since the Payer is able to ensure the correctness of the Payee.
Some highlights from the rulebook
- This Scheme provides a set of rules, practices and standards to be complied with by Participants who adhere to the Scheme.
- The Scheme includes both a real-time and bulk possibility for confirming the Payee.
- The Participantswill choose to participate in both real-time and bulk or either of the two.
- Single Request in real-time may only be sent to Payee PSPs adhering to Single Request in real-time and
- Bulk Requests can only be sent to Payee PSPs adhering to Bulk Requests.
How does it work:
- Before initiating the payment, the Payer wants to confirm the Payment Account of the Payee.
- The Payer initiates the Request to the Payer PSP. The Payer PSP will create and submit a Request to the Payee PSP. The Payer PSP can also be the Payer.
- The Payee PSP provides a Response if the Payment Account is confirmed correctly or not.
The payment process follows, starting with the selection of the payment instrument, followed by the execution of the payment. (The payment process is not regulated by this Scheme).
Instant Payment regulation Europe
The Nordic rulebook fits well with the European Commission's proposal on instant payments where Confirmation of Payee is one of the proposal topics to mitigate fraud and misdirection of instant payments
About SurePay
SurePay is the inventor and market leader of Confirmation of Payee and was founded in the Netherlands in 2016 and has since been providing the IBAN-Name Check service. The IBAN -Name Check service is an innovative, real-time name-checking solution that gives payers greater assurance that their payments are going to the intended recipient.
By confirming if a payee’s name matches the name on the intended recipient’s bank account, the IBAN-Name Check helps prevent payees from transferring money to the wrong person or business, whether by intent, through payment fraud, or unintentionally, through misdirected payments. As European market leader, we are the driving force in the evolution of Confirmation of Payee.
We have been providing our service to all major Dutch banks since 2017. Today have connected over 100 banks directly to SurePay or via existing schemes in Europe and the United Kingdom to perform Confirmation of Payee checks domestic and cross border. We keep expanding within Europe.
More than 250 corporates, including insurance companies, pension funds and energy companies, use the IBAN-Name Check to mitigate fraud and errors in business processes, such as onboarding new customers or suppliers.
How can we help?
Since we launched our service we have performed more than 5 Billion checks, where up to 81% of payment fraud has been mitigated, whilst also seeing a reduction in incorrect payments by 67%.
Our CoP solution has been proven to:
- Reduce the amount invoice related and some forms of Authorised Push Payment (APP) Fraud
- Limit the number of methods that can be used by fraudsters
- Decrease the value and volume of misdirected payments
- Boost customer confidence and satisfaction
- Make it easier to investigate fraud
We are looking forward to helping banks in the Nordics with the implementation of CoP, so they can make good use of all the benefits. We have many different models available to suit the needs of different banks – while, of course, complying with each and every national and international regulation.
Are you ready to join? Book a meeting with us and learn everything we know about Confirmation of Payee. We can also give a demonstration of our solutions and elaborate on the benefits of early implementation.