When Pay.UK launched its confirmation of payee (CoP) service in 2020, it was one of the early pioneers of account name verification (ANV) technology. Designed to safeguard against fraud and misdirection of instant payments, it has played a vital role in driving down authorised fraud rates in the UK. Since October, CoP has been joined by the EU’s new verification of payee (VoP) as a leading ANV scheme, marking a new era for the technology and sparking discussion about future use cases.
The UK was not the first to launch an account name verification service; that honour goes to the Netherlands, when Rabobank launched its IBAN-Name Check in 2017. Inspired by the Dutch offering, the UK was quick to follow suit, creating the blueprint for CoP in 2018. The service was developed with one particular use case in mind: to provide pre-payment checks to those making instant payments, so they could hit ‘send’ safe in the knowledge that funds were being sent to the right destination.
The service has been a success. Today, it is used by more than 320 organisations, performing 2.1m checks daily, helping reduce the number of authorised push payment (APP) fraud cases, with UK Finance reporting a 20% decline in APP fraud between 2023 and 2024.
Following the rollout of CoP, it has become apparent that ANV technology could be valuable in many other scenarios, such as checking direct debit details of new customers and processing bulk payments. In the case of bulk payments, for example, when organisations pay suppliers or run payroll, the payments are typically sent as a batch file.
The ability to run checks against each of the names and accounts in the file before submitting it is hugely beneficial, as any incorrect details would require the file to be amended and regenerated. In contrast, enabling finance teams to run a pre-payment check and remove any incorrect details before sending could save a significant amount of time.
CoP does not support bulk payments currently, which is where the EU’s new VoP scheme could overtake it. Managed by the European Payments Council (EPC), the impetus for VoP stems from the Instant Payments Regulation (IPR), which mandated that VoP checks be carried out for SEPA Credit Transfers and SEPA Instant Credit from October 2025.
Bulk payments have been factored into the VoP’s proposition from the outset. This has not been without complexity, with a report from the Euro Banking Association’s (EBA) Practitioners Group on Instant Payments detailing the challenges associated with bulk VoP checks, such as a lack of standardisation; an issue which the EPC is looking to address in late 2025.
The launch of VoP will also likely contribute to future innovations in ANV technology. Payment service providers (PSPs) have the option of working with multiple routing verification mechanisms (RVMs) to perform checks and experiment with different VoP flows. Moreover, innovation within the verification layer is permitted, and the use of APIs that utilise ISO 20022 resource elements makes it easier to integrate VoP services with back-office systems.
CoP has delivered clear benefits to the UK payments market, helping reduce APP fraud and fostering trust in real-time payments. Now it is joined in the ANV arena by VoP, ushering in a new era for the technology and providing the opportunity for CoP to drive forward its own innovation agenda and reinforce the UK’s leading position in fintech.
Anish Kapoor is CEO of AccessPay