First cross-border Verification of Payee Check launched for payments between France and the Netherlands
SEPAmail.eu and SurePay work together with StreamMind to prevent fraud and misdirection in cross-border payments
SurePay, SEPAMail.eu and StreamMind have today announced the launch of the first cross-border Verification of Payee Check.
This service enables companies and banks to check that the account information entered matches the intended beneficiary when initiating cross-border payments between France and the Netherlands and marks an important first step towards a pan-European solution in the fight against fraud.
Joint forces
The partnership links more than 30 Dutch banks and 114 French banks. SurePay verifies 99.5% of all online payments in the Netherlands with its Verification of Payee solution. SEPAmail.eu offers an IBAN verification service in France for more than 90% of all bank accounts used by companies. StreamMind provides the connection between these two networks.
This allows banks, consumers and companies in France and the Netherlands to check the accuracy of the account holder. This significantly reduces fraud and errors in payments. In addition, Verification of Payee increases efficiency and improves the customer journey.
Verification of Payee
Since 2017, Verification of Payee then called IBAN-Name Check, has been built into Online Banking of the Dutch banks, which checks the name of the account holder when making a payment. This prevents errors and fraud. Every day, a warning is issued 100,000 times that the name and account holder are not the same. This gives consumers and businesses greater certainty that their payments go to the intended account holder.
When it was introduced in 2017, Rabobank and later the other Dutch banks were the first in the world to protect their customers with this service. Rabobank will also be the first Dutch bank to offer this cross border Verification of Payee Check to their customers.
Verification of Payee is also used by companies like insurance companies, lenders, government agencies, energy companies and many others, to prevent fraud or when accepting new suppliers, customers and employees.
Across Europe, payments have increasingly shifted to digital channels. This has led to a sharp increase in fraud through methods such as phishing, spoofing, APP fraud, invoice fraud and CEO fraud. In addition, fraud is becoming increasingly international, with fraudsters using foreign bank accounts for fraudulent purposes.
David-Jan Janse, CEO and CO-Founder of SurePay, said: “Since implementing Verification of Payee for banks and corporates in the Netherlands in 2017, our customers have witnessed an 81% drop in reported scams and a 67% drop in misdirected payments. The natural next step was to make our solution available for cross-border payments and we are very proud of our partnership with SEPAmail and StreamMind which allows us to achieve that goal. The team at SurePay are looking forward to working with SEPAmail and StreamMind to fight fraud.”
Jacques Vanhautère, CEO of SEPAmail.eu, said: “2021 is clearly the year of take-off of DIAMOND, our French IBAN check solution with more than 30% gross. With this partnership with SurePay and thanks to the help of StreamMind we enter now in another dimension that is the European area to offer a real international solution to fight against IBAN fraud. This connection between France and the Netherlands is a first great step to a cross Europe IBAN reliability solution for both French and Netherlands communities.
Nicolas Muhadri, CEO of StreamMind, said: “Our goal is to secure exchanges and transactions between organisations and humans. We believe this partnership is a step forward in international development to fight payment fraud. StreamMind is honored to be part of this partnership and to have developed softwares that is cross-country compatible to make this project come true. We know this is only the beginning; we are discussing with most European countries to connect them before the end of 2022, knowing that client’s requests have already tripled between 2020 and 2021.”
About SurePay - Payments made personal, easy and more secure
SurePay makes payments personal, easier and even more secure. Leveraging SurePays’ unique technology, a variety of solutions are offered to financial institutions, organizations and businesses across Europe. Solutions include Confirmation of Payee in the UK and Verification of Payee for European banks. SurePay continues to develop innovative solutions, releases new services regularly and is well underway to become the leading European platform for account verification services in online banking and in business processes.
About SEPAmail
SEPAmail.eu, owned by the largest French banks, is a market infrastructure in charge of a secure messaging scheme to the service of European banks. SEPAmail for Secure Exchange Paperless Advanced Mail is a digital information transfers scheme managed by SEPAmail.eu.
- From digital information to digital payments
- An answer to paperless exchange of information like E-invoices
- A fully secured backbone network between PSP actors (PSD (1or2) compliant)
- Multi-applications: DIAMOND (an IBAN reliability Service), AIGUE MARINE (account switching solution) and also other multiple applications
- Fully ISO standardised
About StreamMind
Since 2008, StreamMind is the market leader in payment, cybersecurity and digital transformation for organizations. StreamMind solutions connect hundreds of banks and companies across Europe. Our multi-sector expertise allows us to create solutions for any business easily, securely and rapidly operational. StreamMind has gained recognition from groups such as the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research, Bpi France and Business France. Located in the heart of Paris, but present everywhere in the world, StreamMind is made up of a highly experienced team of researchers, architects, advanced software engineers and high-level consultants.