Confirmation of Payee

The payees bank or building society receiving the payment will decide if the name and account details sent to them for the CoP check match or not.

They’ll send their response to the sender’s bank or building society, and this will be shown to the payer as a message.

If you don’t get a match you should contact the person or business you are trying to pay to confirm the account name, sort code and account number. 

Yes. This information is important and helps the recipient's payment provider to decide which CoP check response to return.

Our online payment channels will have a field available that lets you choose whether the account details belong to a personal or business account.

If you are making a payment in response to an email from an executive or another colleague in your organisation, and you get a no match response, then speak to the person who sent the message, either in person or over the phone, to check the request is genuine.

When calling that person, use a telephone number you know to be correct – don’t rely on any telephone numbers quoted in the email itself.

If you are making a payment to a supplier and you get a no match response, then speak to someone you know at the company concerned, using a number you know to be genuine.

If you have received the beneficiary account details via email, do not use any telephone numbers quoted in the email itself.

Exercise caution if you have received correspondence, supposedly from the supplier, claiming that their bank account details have recently changed.

No, unfortunately not, but it’s important to remember that CoP is one of a range of measures, some already implemented and others, including CoP, which are being introduced by the industry to help reduce fraud.

You have an important part to play in helping us to prevent fraud and scams - by carefully analysing the COP response and only proceeding after you have checked that the details are correct.

Yes, payment providers will use the Open Banking directory service and highly secure architecture to safely exchange CoP requests.

In addition, to be accredited to use the system payment providers must undergo rigorous security checks and they are also regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority or European equivalents.  

Learn more about Open Banking here

For scam payments

CoP is linked to the Contingent Reimbursement Model (CRM) for Authorised Push Payment Scams.  

The CRM outlines where liability should lie if money is lost. This is dependent on several different variables. 

Liability could ultimately lie with the victim’s bank, the scammer’s (recipient) bank, the victim or some combination of those different parties.

The bank the payment was made from will contact the payees bank.  The payees bank then has a certain amount of time to contact their customer and ask for permission to return the funds.

The return of the funds cannot be guaranteed.