Clear Junction, a firm focused n cross-border payments solutions for regulated institutions, has announced the launch of its new Confirmation of Payee (CoP) service.
Available for clients receiving GBP payments in the UK, the new service “will boost the security of these transactions amid the rising threat of authorized push payment (APP) fraud.”
Earlier this year, the UK Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) published “a new rule requiring banks and building societies to adopt CoP as a means of reducing the number of individuals and businesses falling victim to APP scams. CoP is being rolled out in phases across the industry, with the final phase scheduled for October 2024.”
Figures from UK Finance reveal “that in the first six months of 2023, £239.4 million was lost to APP fraud, with the number of cases rising 22%.”
Recognizing the pervasive threat of APP fraud, and in line with its commitment to upholding the highest financial integrity and security standards, Clear Junction has “introduced its CoP service a year ahead of the PSR’s mandatory schedule.”
Dima Kats, CEO of Clear Junction, commented:
“APP fraud has grown rapidly alongside the use of the real-time payments schemes in recent years. As an innovative service provider, Clear Junction is proud to be among the first few firms to tackle this challenge head on. We are committed to adjusting our controls to minimise the opportunities for bad actors to benefit from technological progress. Any incident of fraud is devastating for victims, and APP fraud methods are so sophisticated that even the most tech-savvy and security-conscious individuals and businesses can fall victim to it. That’s why we have made the CoP service available for our clients and their end users now – to thwart APP fraud in its tracks.”
CoP is a way for financial institutions to “verify the accuracy of accounts sending and/or receiving funds.”
When a customer triggers a payment initiation request, CoP involves checking “the name of the account to which payments are being made prior to the execution, thereby reducing certain types of fraud and misdirected payments that occur through user error.”
Traditionally, payers would “provide their payment service provider with the payee’s details, such as the bank sort code and account number, along with the name of the person or organization that the funds were being sent to.”
The institution facilitating the payment would then check the sort code and account number and, if everything was “deemed correct, the funds would be sent.”
However, this method lacked the security checks needed “as payers had no means of checking the name of the account against these details.”
The introduction of CoP means that “all details can now be cross-checked, and any discrepancies prevent the payment from being processed – making it virtually impossible for APP scams to work.”