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Banks to perform name checks
Name checks will be carried out when UK bank customers send money to other people from next year in a bid to halt a rising tide of bank transfer fraud.
At the moment, anyone wanting to transfer money is asked for the recipient’s account name, account number and sort code. However, the bank does not currently check if the account name is correct. In recent years, fraudsters “have become increasingly sophisticated in using this to trick people into sending money to the wrong account,” says the UK’s payments operator, Pay.UK. The new system to help combat this is called confirmation of payee, and will alert the sender if the name does not match the account.
A total of £145m was stolen from bank customers through the so-called authorised push payment (APP) scams in the first half of the year, with many victims unable to get the money back because current legislation means they are liable for any losses incurred if they authorise a payment themselves.