Confirmation of Payee - is it as poor for everyone else?

robatwork

Since CoP was enabled by Santander, I've setup 4 new Faster Payments.  2 were to massive organisations - Amex and NS&I. 2 were to people I know.

In every case the CoP check failed and I had to click the box that said (paraphrasing) Details cannot be matched to your payee, are you sure you wish to continue as you could be sending to a fraudster?

The ones to people I know, I did check their account name first and typed in what I was informed. I do accept perhaps they were joint accounts or I can't spell "Philip". 
However NS&I  was using the precise details from their Help documentation which showed their name as NS&I. The payment did arrive there as it did in all the other cases.

Is everyone else's experience as shabby as this or does it actually work for others - or other banks?

p00hsticks

For 'massive organisations', as far as I recall from the couple I've set up relatively recently, I've not had to go through the CoP process, as my bank provides a drop down list of the major companies, grouped by area (e.g. utilities, financial etc) with the sort code, account number and name pre-populated. Don't Santander do similar ?

eskbanker

robatwork said:

Since CoP was enabled by Santander, I've setup 4 new Faster Payments.  2 were to massive organisations - Amex and NS&I. 2 were to people I know.

In every case the CoP check failed and I had to click the box that said (paraphrasing) Details cannot be matched to your payee, are you sure you wish to continue as you could be sending to a fraudster?

The ones to people I know, I did check their account name first and typed in what I was informed. I do accept perhaps they were joint accounts or I can't spell "Philip". 
However NS&I  was using the precise details from their Help documentation which showed their name as NS&I. The payment did arrive there as it did in all the other cases.

Is everyone else's experience as shabby as this or does it actually work for others - or other banks?

From memory I've also set up four from Santander - an individual, a couple with a joint account, a small company and a large(ish) company, and only the last one wasn't recognised, the other three were validated first time by CoP without problem.

EssexExile

It's wonderful! I've been distributing my late father's money around the family and I find it very reassuring when sending tens of thousands to know it's going to the right place. Sometimes the account name isn't exactly as told to me but I know that if I have Miss M. Smith and Santander tells me it should be Mary Smith then I have the right place.

BrownTrout

it only doesnt work with building society accounts where the accounts are one sort code and account number (so using a reference number)

colsten

I have never been sure what the point of CoP is, apart from people having the misconception that more than a sort code and account number are needed to send money to a given account. Now that we have some crude implementation of name checking that works (provided you know what the actual name on the account is) with some accounts at a small number of financial institutions some people are even more frightened than they were before when making online payments.

colsten

EssexExile said:

It's wonderful! I've been distributing my late father's money around the family and I find it very reassuring when sending tens of thousands to know it's going to the right place. Sometimes the account name isn't exactly as told to me but I know that if I have Miss M. Smith and Santander tells me it should be Mary Smith then I have the right place.

You could have sent a one pound test payment to each of the recipients, and waited for their confirmation that they have received the money, if you didn't trust yourself to type the sort code and account number correctly, or if you didn't trust the recipients to be able to give you their correct sort code and account number. This method has been available for a couple of decades already.

Ashen

colsten said:

EssexExile said:

It's wonderful! I've been distributing my late father's money around the family and I find it very reassuring when sending tens of thousands to know it's going to the right place. Sometimes the account name isn't exactly as told to me but I know that if I have Miss M. Smith and Santander tells me it should be Mary Smith then I have the right place.

You could have sent a one pound test payment to each of the recipients, and waited for their confirmation that they have received the money, if you didn't trust yourself to type the sort code and account number correctly, or if you didn't trust the recipients to be able to give you their correct sort code and account number. This method has been available for a couple of decades already.

Of course that's been possible, but a quick automatic name check is undoubtedly a lot less hassle than contacting the recipient, getting them to to check their bank account, before coming back to you, and doing a second payment.  Also, in my experience, at least some banks hold up a second payment made soon after a £1 test payment, presumably for security checks.

Fingerbobs

BrownTrout said:

it only doesnt work with building society accounts where the accounts are one sort code and account number (so using a reference number)

It (sometimes) does work if you select the option for paying a "business" rather than an "individual" (or equivalent terminology) and enter the name of the Building Society as the recipient name.

[Deleted User]

Fingerbobs said:

BrownTrout said:

it only doesnt work with building society accounts where the accounts are one sort code and account number (so using a reference number)

It (sometimes) does work if you select the option for paying a "business" rather than an "individual" (or equivalent terminology) and enter the name of the Building Society as the recipient name.

It doesn't really help identify the end recipient as the account will be 'XYZ Building Society' where a roll/reference number is used. 

Fingerbobs

dahj said:

Fingerbobs said:

BrownTrout said:

it only doesnt work with building society accounts where the accounts are one sort code and account number (so using a reference number)

It (sometimes) does work if you select the option for paying a "business" rather than an "individual" (or equivalent terminology) and enter the name of the Building Society as the recipient name.

It doesn't really help identify the end recipient as the account will be 'XYZ Building Society' where a roll/reference number is used. 

It confirms you've entered the correct sort code and account number for the building society, so it's confirmed two out of the three pieces of information entered.