U.K. Banks Race Against the Clock to Adopt Confirmation of Payee

Now that Brexit’s deadline has come and gone, there’s a new deadline on which U.K. banks are focusing. By March 31, 2020, all must implement processes complying with “Confirmation of Payee,” a regulation put into place by the U.K. payments authority, Pay.UK, that is intended to fight payment fraud in the context of real-time payments by giving bank customers assurance their payments are directed to their intended recipient. Essentially, Confirmation of Payee (CoP) automates payee-verification before a payment goes through in real-time.

A number of large U.K. banks have already adopted CoP. Others still lag behind, which might seem surprising considering the pounds equivalent of more than $430 million was lost to payment fraud in 2018 alone. But the deadline looms, and Exela is prepared to assist its global banking customers with its own CoP solution, which leverages the Open Banking Directory and artificial intelligence to exchange CoP requests and work toward validating destination and account holders. Exela’s solution, which debuted at Finovate Europe 2019, is part of its highly-regarded Banking and Financial Services Suite and is expected to work as an important step in the process of combatting payment fraud.

In a recent article for B2C, Exela’s Senior Vice President, Business Strategy and Sales, David Jones, reviewed the imminent need for CoP in the U.K. and the how Exela’s solution works in a way that will be transparent to bank customers (except in those instances when a mismatch is identified). Jones also notes that due to Exela’s flexible deployment model, the service can be delivered to banks at a relatively low cost.

“We are excited about the expansion of our global banking solution with the launch of Exela CoP,” notes Vitalie Robu President EMEA, Exela Technologies. “Our team will continue to explore new technology-enabled solutions to improve the lives of our customers, and work with global financial institutions to automate their business processes.”