Railsr collaborated with SurePay and Railsr customer ANNA Money to get its new Confirmation of Payee service implemented and live within a four weeks. By ensuring that a payee’s name matches the name on the intended recipient’s bank account, Confirmation of Payee helps prevent payees from transferring money to the wrong person or business, whether by intent, through payment fraud, or unintentionally through misdirected payments.
SurePay performs over 300,000 checks a day in the UK and works closely with Pay.UK to continuously improve its CoP offering.
Alexander Kokovin, Head of Business Accounts at ANNA Money has made an official statement included in the company press release, according to which prior to joining the CoP scheme, ANNA’s customers had faced some issues when trying to get paid by their clients. The company reportedly recognised that it caused some people to worry unnecessarily that paying into an ANNA account wasn’t entirely safe and our customers appeared unprofessional as their details couldn’t be verified. Through our partnership with Railsr, ANNA Money piloted SurePay’s solution during a month-long trial in June 2022 followed by the fact that ANNA is now part of the CoP scheme.
APP fraud in the UK
Recent research from UK Finance cited by Railsr has revealed that the number of incidents of Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud in the UK has increased by 39% from GBP 420.7 million in 2020 to GBP 583.2 million in 2021. It has become increasingly clear that fraudsters are now targeting non-Confirmation of Payee banks and financial services firms.
According to Open Banking UK, There were 195,996 incidents of APP scams in 2021, including:
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GBP 214.8 million lost to impersonation scams, where criminals impersonate trusted organisations such as a bank, or the NHS, to trick people into giving away their personal and financial information.
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GBP 171.7 million lost to investment scams, where a business or consumer is persuaded to invest in a non-existent fund.
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99,733 cases of purchase scams, the most common type of scam – accounting for 51% of all cases – although total losses were GBP 64.1 million. This is where a business or consumer is persuaded (online, by email, text or phone) to buy something that doesn’t exist or is never delivered.
There was a surge of these frauds during the pandemic as more people were working from home, spending more time on the internet, and shopping online, UK Finance explained.
The Confirmation of Payee (CoP) account name checking service was launched by Pay.UK in 2020 to help prevent fraud and accidentally misdirected payments. According to Open Banking UK, Lloyds Banking Group said that the system helped reduce bank transfer scams by 31% within the first few months of its introduction in 2020. The CoP service has now processed more than one billion messages.
