On the bank’s side, there are two important things to consider.

First of all, the API that allows for Account Name Verification has to be integrated into your online banking environment.

Secondly, data provisioning has to be taken care of. This concerns the provisioning of customer data by your bank to SurePay so that SurePay’s algorithm can match the payment data to your bank’s customer data. Further information on required implementation efforts can be found in the sample Implementation Plan

When making a transfer online, Verification of Payee, the IBAN-Name Check and the SurePay Confirmation of Payee verify entered account details of the beneficiary prior to the actual transfer. The verification is based on the unique combination of the account holder’s name information beloning to a specific account number. The payer’s bank sends the entered account name and number to SurePay, which in turn verifies the details against the available data in order to provides a response. Should entered details be incorrect (i.e. the beneficiary name does not match with the names known at the bank for this account number), then the payment initiator will get a notification. The payer might be at risk of payment fraud or possibly has made a mistake.

Verification of Payee is tailored for the EU market and the SurePay Confirmation of Payee adheres to UK market requirements, rules and regulations.

Should entered account details match the information known at the bank for the relevant account number, generally no notifications are prompted. When this is not the case, you can distinguish three main types of notifications:

Warning

When the entered name does not match with the account information known at the relevant bank by any means – for instance ‘D. Williams’ instead of ‘K. James’ – a warning notification is prompted. Please be aware that you might be subject to a scam, fraud or may have made a mistake. The notification will tell you that the account holder is registered under a different name at the relevant bank. Consider alternative measures or get in touch with the beneficiary before proceeding to transfer any funds.

Name Suggestion

In case of minor errors, such as a typo, you will be prompted with a suggested name as registered at the relevant bank. For instance, ‘Williams’ instead of ‘Wiliams’. Please check whether the suggested name belongs to the person/company you are intending to transfer funds to.

Service Not Available

SurePay verifies account numbers and their information across its base. In case SurePay is not able to verify account details against an account number, you will be notified as well. This can, for instance, occur for foreign bank accounts numbers for which SurePay may have insufficient information available.

No, you don’t. SurePay’s Verification of Payee service is not a separate app, nor programme. Your own bank can opt to integrate SurePay’s Account Name Verification service in its online environment, and make it available to you. The service generally works for online transfers and is commonly made available through a regular banking application.

Currently, SurePay’s services are available to customers of 100+ EU banks.

At the moment, SurePay’s  service is exclusively available to customers of 100+ Dutch, UK, French and Italian banks:

Businesses and organisations can also implement the Verification of Payee in their own business processes and systems, regardless of what bank they use.

Notifications only appear in the payment initiation screen, prior to sending through your payment, and appears right after you have completed the fields beneficiary name and account number (IBAN). On the background the check is carried out instantly without any noticeable delay.

Notifications only appear should your entered beneficiary details differ from their registration at the relevant bank. When the beneficiary details you’ve entered correspond to the details of the back account holder at the bank of registry, no notification is given. If the entered beneficiary details contain a typo or rather small deviation from the actual registration, you will be prompted a clickable name suggestion.

In case you are not able to further verify the beneficiary details in your online banking environment, please contact the beneficiary to cross check the account details. You are responsible for they payments and transfers you make – even when a notification is prompted.

SurePay’s Account Check deploys an intelligent algorithm that compares the user’s entered beneficiary details against the SurePay database, which contains data from several sources such as connected banks and e.g. the Dutch Chambers of Commerce.

The service takes advantage of multiple data fields of the beneficiary’s bank of registry in order to match with users’ input. The outcome can be a match, a near match or a non-match, in which case the user can be prompted with a notification.

For its operations, it is important that SurePay’s service has access to complete and up-to-date client records of connected banks. Ensuring this will help to prevent fraud and payment misdirection.

In order to ensure high quality matching, the SurePay algorithm needs access to the verified customer data of the bank that has issued the account. For business accounts, SurePay retrieves additional trade names as registered at the Chambers of Commerce, for the registry number that the banks hold in their files for their business customers. This is important because payments to trade names should not lead to a warning notification.

SurePay closes agreements with connected banks for the provisioning of customer data, in which purpose limitation is included and clearly described. Meaning that the data you provision as a bank will strictly and solely be used for the agreed purposes.

The user has always been at the centre of what we do. In designing and building SurePay’s Account Name Verification service we have considered the fact that end-users would always like an uninterrupted and pleasant payment experience. Hence, the check is performed instantly and highly reliable. Moreover, the user always remains in charge. Meaning that regardless of any notification prompted, the user may always choose to continue the transfer.

In line with strict policies and regulations, we never disclose any personal information on private bank accounts in our notifications, unless we’re certain that the user has made type when entering the beneficiary details.

Our Account Name Verification solution is tried and tested in multiple European countries and has performed billions of checks over the last 7 years