SurePay, the IBAN-name check provider, confirmation of payee (CoP) and verification of payee (VoP) to over 100 banks, has expanded its services following a strategic agreement with Swift, the messaging network, and the integration of Swift’s payment pre-validation service.
By collaborating with Swift, SurePay can now service banks on a domestic, pan-European and global scale, boosting the security of their financial transactions. SurePay’s VoP name-matching solution will operate domestically and cross-border, hoping to empower European, British and global banks to pre-validate international payments.
SurePay offers real-time verification of IBAN and beneficiary names based on live data sources to validate key payment information before initiating a transaction. It developed the service to help PSPs add a crucial layer of verification and risk mitigation to financial transactions.
Swift’s payment pre-validation service with Beneficiary Account Verification complements this capability, taking SurePay’s services to a global level.
Bridget Meijer, manager of new markets and partnerships at SurePay, explained the benefits the partnership could help it offer: “At SurePay, we’re committed to having the technology in place to protect our customers from fraud, misdirected payments, and unnecessary and costly friction.
“Swift’s strategy to enable instant and frictionless payments and SurePay’s commitment to providing the best-in-class name-matching solution make for a powerful partnership. We look forward to continuing our mission and journey globally alongside Swift.”
SurePay will leverage Swift’s extensive network of 11,500 institutions across more than 200 countries to bring the benefits of its enhanced VoP service to a broader European and global audience.
Ensuring interoperability between CoP systems
Thomas Peeters, head of Benelux, Nordics and Baltics at Swift, explained: “Simple mistakes are the cause of huge delays in cross-border payments. Swift’s payment pre-validation solution utilises local CoP/VoP responses and the pseudonymised and aggregated data from across our network to ensure beneficiary information is correct before a payment is executed.
“With Europe adopting instant payments regulation that includes a requirement to pre-validate beneficiary account information, interoperability between CoP systems is a simple way to maintain compliance and ensure the smooth and scalable flow of pan-European and cross-border payments.”
SurePay customer Rabobank is one of the PSPs that has already integrated Swift’s solution into its Confirmation of Payee system to enable foreign banks to pre-validate payment data.
Ton Versteeg, specialist payments/market infrastructures at Rabobank, also commented: “As a member of the Payment Pre-validation community, we at Rabobank understand the value we can bring as a data provider on the service.
“We’ve integrated Swift’s solution into our existing domestic Confirmation of Payee system, SurePay, to help banks beyond our borders pre-validate if their payment data is correct. Doing so greatly expands the impact that domestic systems can have in tackling fraud and reducing cross-border transaction friction and operational costs.”
