Confirmation of Payee (CoP)

Confirmation of Payee (CoP) is an account name-checking service for UK domestic payments. It is designed to reduce misdirected payments and give payers (and payees) greater assurance that payments are being sent to, or collected from, the intended account holder.

CoP launched in 2020. Hundreds of organisations have implemented it, with millions of checks completed every day. The Payment System Regulator’s 2024 direction to extend CoP coverage underlines its importance as an anti-fraud tool and a utility service customers expect when paying a new account.

How Confirmation of Payee works

CoP allows an account name to be checked—including a personal vs business account indicator—before initiating or collecting a payment. There is no central infrastructure: CoP is an API-based peer-to-peer service, with a directory that identifies the organisations in the ecosystem.

When a payer enters a sort code and account number, the CoP flow returns a result indicating whether the name matches, is close (partial match), or does not match. This helps prevent Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud and mistaken payments to the wrong account.

Why name-checking matters: a real-world example

Business Email Compromise (BEC) and invoice fraud rely on tricking payers into sending funds to bank accounts that do not belong to the intended recipient. In a high-profile case, a Lithuanian man pleaded guilty to defrauding two large technology companies of more than $100 million by impersonating a legitimate vendor (Quanta Computer). Using fake invoices, contracts, and a lookalike company, he induced the companies to wire payments to bank accounts he controlled; the funds were then laundered through accounts in several countries. The scheme ran from 2013 to 2015. (NPR, March 2019.)

In that scenario, the payers believed they were paying the real vendor. A Confirmation of Payee–style check—verifying that the account name matched the intended payee before the wire was sent—could have flagged a mismatch and helped prevent or delay the payments. CoP and the EU’s Verification of Payee (VoP) exist to reduce exactly this risk: ensuring that the name on the destination account matches who the payer intends to pay, and cutting down on misdirected and fraudulent payments.

Do banks provide Confirmation of Payee APIs?

Yes. Banks provide and participate in CoP in two ways: as the payee's bank, they expose APIs (or respond via the scheme) so that other banks and PSPs can request a name check against their accounts; as the payer's bank, they call those APIs to perform the check before a payment is sent. CoP is therefore an API-based service offered by banks and other account-holding PSPs.

In the UK, the Payment Systems Regulator has directed the largest banking groups to implement CoP, and hundreds of institutions now participate. The following banks are among those we list on the Open Banking Tracker that offer Confirmation of Payee (UK domestic scheme). You can use our provider pages for API documentation, developer portals, and aggregator coverage.

• Barclays
• HSBC
• Lloyds Bank
• NatWest
• Nationwide
• Santander UK

For a full directory of open banks and API coverage, see our banks with open APIs page. CoP is not yet shown as a separate API product type in our provider data; the list above is based on UK scheme participation.

Participating in Confirmation of Payee

Eligibility criteria to join CoP are:

• The organisation must be FCA/NCA regulated for offering payment services in the UK (account-holding PSP).
• The organisation must own its own sort code in the Extended Industry Sort Code Directory (EISCD), or
• Organisations that do not own their own sort code must offer accounts addressable by Secondary Reference Data (SRD).

Direct model

Account-holding PSPs can build a CoP solution in-house or use the services of a Technical Service Provider (TSP). In both cases, the PSP is a Direct Participant of CoP.

Aggregator model

Alternatively, an eligible PSP can onboard via the indirect access model through a CoP Aggregator. The aggregator provides CoP services to account-holding PSPs and is a Direct Participant; those PSPs are Indirect Participants. Organisations can apply to become an Aggregator and are considered Direct Participants once they meet the scheme’s criteria.

CoP aggregators

The following organisations have completed scheme onboarding and can offer CoP aggregation services to account-holding Payment Service Providers. Confirm project dates and availability directly with each provider.

Payer Name Verification (PNV)

Payer Name Verification (PNV) is a supplementary service for existing CoP participants. It allows organisations to perform account name-checking before setting up or amending Bacs Direct Debit payments, so that payments are collected from the correct account.

PNV can improve first-time set-up rates, lower rejection rates, and help reduce Direct Debit fraud when setting up new instructions, as well as the risk of Direct Debit indemnity claims. For more information on PNV, contact the scheme operator.

Confirmation of Payee across countries

There is no single global standard for account name-checking. Each jurisdiction has its own scheme or regulation, with the same idea—check the payee name against the account before sending—but different account identifiers, rules, and infrastructure.

The user experience is similar everywhere: the payer enters the account identifier and payee name; the system returns a result such as match, close match, or no match; the payer can then proceed, correct the details, or cancel. What differs is the legal basis (voluntary scheme vs regulation), the identifier (sort code, IBAN, BSB), and whether checks are done peer-to-peer (e.g. UK) or via a central hub (e.g. Australia). Cross-border payments are generally not covered by these domestic/regional schemes today.

Frequently asked questions

Related resources