New name check service for online payments to help prevent fraud - MSE News

colsten

HornetSaver wrote: »

My general thoughts on this are it's a step forward but with a very large asterisk next to that statement. This is likely to disproportionately affect married women who use their maiden name for professional reasons, a more-and-more common practise. It is likely to increase the level of administration before a bank account is set up, as the risk to the bank of getting an identity wrong will become higher. And for those who might see this as the straw that broke the camel's back with regards to legally changing their first name (as dramatic as that might sound, many people use their middle name or an adopted nickname, and not being able to receive money is kind of a big deal), the ease of this process would be down to the individual bank.

There is no risk to any bank. They just show you the name they found and compare it with your payee name. It remains your decision whether you want to send the money if the names don't match.

You will also be able to continue to use whatever you like in the payee name. For example, you may pay "Penny" when the name on her account is actually "P Goodbody". The bank - thankfully - will not stop you to make payments to Penny but they will have it on record that they told you that the payee doesn't match the account holder name, and that you asked for the payment to be made regardless. It is just shifting the risk from banks to people making payments, and it will make us think again before we ok a payment.

mac123

eskbanker wrote: »

I don't think it's been flagged as a separate story but the authority announcing this is Pay.UK, the new name for what was previously referred to as NPSO (New Payment System Operator), the umbrella body into which Bacs, Faster Payments and the Cheque and Credit Clearing Company were absorbed.

Pay.UK might sound like an on-trend identity but it doesn't make for a straightforward search - perhaps Google is taking some time to catch up but searching for 'pay.uk' or just 'pay uk' inevitably brings up all sorts of results other than this body, so for anyone else wanting to get to the organisation's own website it can be found at https://www.wearepay.uk/ - doh!

I was hoping that there would be some more detail (especially in the previously-discussed area of such checking itself being open to fraudulent misuse and/or data protection issues) but there's little more than the press release parroted by MSE, at https://www.wearepay.uk/new-name-check-safeguard-for-payments-revealed/, although the relevant part of their site is https://www.wearepay.uk/confirmation-of-payee/

The NPSO only rebranded to Pay.UK this morning so of course there won’t be much of a presence on the internet - Google doesn’t index new content on demand

madvicker

colsten wrote: »

There is no risk to any bank. They just show you the name they found and compare it with your payee name. It remains your decision whether you want to send the money if the names don't match.

You will also be able to continue to use whatever you like in the payee name. For example, you may pay "Penny" when the name on her account is actually "P Goodbody". The bank - thankfully - will not stop you to make payments to Penny but they will have it on record that they told you that the payee doesn't match the account holder name, and that you asked for the payment to be made regardless. It is just shifting the risk from banks to people making payments, and it will make us think again before we ok a payment.

The risk is already on people making payments. It lowers their risk rather than shifts more risk onto them. And depending on the scenario (there are thousands of scenarios) it could eliminate the risk on the person and shift it back to the bank.

stclair

That could be arkward if you have a double barrelled surname.

antrobus

madvicker wrote: »

The risk is already on people making payments. It lowers their risk rather than shifts more risk onto them. And depending on the scenario (there are thousands of scenarios) it could eliminate the risk on the person and shift it back to the bank.

You do realise, don't you, that the objective is to eliminate the risk altogether? As in, the payor realises (for example) when told that the 'account names do not match' that something ain't right and doesn't make the payment.

Despite the fact that APP fraud has been well publicised, there are still oodles of people who don't understand how it works and fall into the trap. The whole point of confirmation of payee is to stop this happening.

18cc

There will be times when you won't be able to avoid the warning. For example, if the correct payee name is Wessex Water and you have three payees - Wessex Water, My House - Wessex Water, My Flat and Wessex Water, My Shop then all three will get flagged. Clearly you can't call them all Wessex Water. Another example might be if you have more than one savings account at an institution.

masonic

18cc wrote: »

There will be times when you won't be able to avoid the warning. For example, if the correct payee name is Wessex Water and you have three payees - Wessex Water, My House - Wessex Water, My Flat and Wessex Water, My Shop then all three will get flagged. Clearly you can't call them all Wessex Water. Another example might be if you have more than one savings account at an institution.

Easily solvable by having a separate 'Payee nickname' field when setting up the payment, as some banks already have.

pafpcg

masonic wrote: »

Easily solvable by having a separate 'Payee nickname' field when setting up the payment, as some banks already have.

Some banks, but many don't!

I can see major problems for some people on this forum who transfer funds from one bank account to another if the payee name must match the account name simply because many of the account names will be the same - our own names. As 18cc has already flagged-up, how can we identify the correct receiving account on a long list of payees if many of the payee names are identical?

My Santander joint account pays out ten standing orders to Virgin Money regular E-savers every month for me and my partner; every two months, a pair of those standing orders is terminated. Then there's all the Virgin Money Branch regular savers..... Add to that the regular payments to building societies, to HSBC, M&S, First Direct, etc, for accounts in my or my partner's name. Anyone have any ideas on how to keep track of fifty or so payees with account names which are identical for all practical purposes? For example, at one bank to which we need to send money, my partner and I each have two sole accounts and we share two joint accounts (a total of six) - how can we distinguish between the accounts in our list of payees without looking at the account number for each payee? (Currently, we have used payee names in the format XXX-A1, XXX-A2, XXX-B1, XXX-B2, XXX-A&B, XXX-B&A.)

Agreed, assigning nicknames would be a solution, but I very much doubt the IT Directors at the banks will tell their board colleagues "Yes, we can solve these issues easily". Adding nicknames to payee names will mean a significant change to the user interface - banks don't do this quickly or cheaply!

Of course, that's assuming that a sending payee name must match the receiving account name - it's mandatory. If it's optional, as suggested above, then I can continue to do what I want to do, at the cost of confirming I'm happy that the sent account name doesn't need to match the receiving account name, for each of my payees.

Edit after reading the proposal document*:

OK, it's not proposed to be manadatory. The proposal states that if the account names don't match, the user has the option to: "Proceed to make the payment with clear warnings about the consequences and liability if the payment goes wrong". I wonder how they propose to deal with standing-order payments - will the check be done only at the inital set-up?

The proposal also includes something that caught my eye: "Instant verification: Pay.UK expects the end-to-end CoP [Confirmation of Payee] experience should be undertaken in near real time." I can see some financial institutions having issues with that - Tesco? Coop? the building society sector?

* the web-site isn't designed for old grey-beards like me. I eventually managed to get their "full-page" display mode to do something useful such as turn itself into a downloadable PDF document (just by asking it to print itself!)

masonic

pafpcg wrote: »

Some banks, but many don't!

It wouldn't surprise me if more banks add this feature after these changes are introduced. It is very easy to implement payee nicknames (much easier than this payee verification feature) and there will certainly be demand for it.

Uxb

It won't be mandatory that they match - that simply will not work.
Try getting "Prof AJ and Mrs PH Jones Household Account" totally correct every time: Is "Prof and Mrs Jones" going to be listed as OK or as not matching?
I run as treasurer an social type association/organization with a long complex bank account name.
Everyone pays the acronym of the association name (eg GHYLA) either by cheque or by transfer.