Confirmation of Payee (CoP) is a service which has been designed to confirm if a payment is being sent to the right person and will alert you if something is wrong. CoP was originally designed to target Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud where a victim is scammed into sending a payment to a criminal.
When you try and make a payment, your bank will check that the payment details match the name of the person (or organisation) who holds that account and give you a confirmation message. These messages may be slightly different for each bank but will generally follow the same theme.
- Payee details match – the account holder matches the information provided
- Payee details do not match – the account holder does not match the information provided. You will be advised to check the information or cancel the payment
- Payee details are a close match – some of the information matches. For example, the surname might match, but the first name may be Jon instead of Jonathan. You will need to review the information and decide whether you are happy to proceed
- Payee is not supported for CoP – the receiving bank is not a member of CoP at present and a check was not possible.
CoP was mandated for the six biggest current account providers (NatWest/RBS, Barclays, HSBC, Santander, Lloyds and Nationwide Building Society) in 2020, and now all other banks and building societies are required to join up by September 2024.
Yes we are and we're currently actively preparing to introduce it. However we do need a different technical infrastructure for making those checks. We will be implementing CoP in 2024, inline with regulations.
No, we're proud that we've looked after our members’ money since 1849 and we're committed to protecting our members from fraud. Our online accounts only allow payments to be made to your nominated account, so you will still have chance to use CoP to protect yourself from fraud when you move money to another person. If you hold a branch account we may ask you some further questions when you want to make a payment to make sure we are providing you protection from fraud.
You should regularly review any savings you have. See our full range of savings accounts, compare interest rates and find the right product for your goals. To open an account, call your local branch and speak to an adviser who can book an appointment for you. If you'd prefer to open an account online, take a look at the accounts that our friends over at Beehive Money currently have.
