8000 ‘Confirmation of Payee’ checks done in hours as anti-scam system rolled out
Thursday, 28 November 2024
Banks have pressed the go button on a “confirmation of payee” anti-scam system aimed at reducing fraud losses for bank customers.
Eight banks, including the big four of ANZ, ASB, BNZ and Westpac, began quietly rolling out the system on Thursday to a small proportion of their customers as they checked systems were working as expected.
Confirmation of Payee (or CoP) involves banks checking account names and numbers match before allowing account-to-account payments to go ahead.
When bank customers enter an account name and number to make a payment, Get Verified checks whether they match, sending the customer a notification telling them whether they match, whether there is a near match, and whether they do not match at all.
The customer then decides whether to go ahead with the payment, or to check whether they have made a mistake, or are being scammed.
The system is modelled on one already deployed in the United Kingdom and banks decided to introduce it after a wave of investment scam losses hit the media.
Not only could the system alert customers in cases where they were being manipulated by crooks into sending money to an account operated by someone other than then person they were intending to pay, it would also cut down on “fat finger” errors, with people accidentally sending money to the wrong people by mistyping an account number.
By 4pm Get Verified, the bank-owned company founded to operate the system, said around 8000 checks had been done.
Duncan Robertson, chief executive of Get Verified, explained the messages bank customers would get when the check was done on a payment they were trying to make.
“If you get a ‘Partial Match’, it’s likely due to a typo or use of initials instead of a full name,” he said.
“A ‘No Match’ suggests the account name may not match the intended recipient. We recommend customers pause and double-check with the person they’re paying to ensure correct account details. Only proceed if you are confident in the match and trust the recipient.”
Robertson said: “New Zealand will become one of the first countries to roll out the CoP service nationwide across all major banks.”
Next year, the service would open for non-banks like credit unions and building societies to join.
The system will be rolled out to all bank customers making payments automatically, so there is nothing bank customers have to do to benefit from it.
Robertson said banks were incrementally launching the service over the next three to four months.
“While some customers will see the feature immediately in their mobile and online banking apps, others will gain access over time as banks fine-tune the system’s functionality,” he said.
“By Easter, the CoP service will be fully available for personal banking across all participating banks when making domestic account to account payments.”
Get Verified is owned by 10 banks, including the big four Australian-owned banks.
It does not hold any account details, but instead uses the services of British company OB Connect to enable participating banks to check almost instantaneously with each other whether account names and numbers match.