Confirmation of Payee is a name check. When your customer sets you up as a payee, their bank asks your bank whether the account name they typed belongs to the account they're paying, and returns one of four answers. It doesn't check your sort code or account number, and it can only match against the name your bank holds.
In this article
The short version
- Pay.UK describes Confirmation of Payee as giving "greater assurance that payments are being sent, and collected from, the intended account holder for UK domestic payments".
- Four answers exist: match, close match with the actual name shown, no match, and unavailable.
- The check covers CHAPS, Faster Payments and Bacs payments, both debit and credit.
- It's a name check layered on top of existing sort code and account number routing, so the numbers themselves are never verified.
- Business customers need your registered business name, or a trading name registered to the account, to get a clean match.
- Payer Name Verification is the sibling service used before a Bacs direct debit mandate is set up or amended.
What Confirmation of Payee checks
Before Confirmation of Payee existed, a UK payment went where the sort code and account number sent it, and the name on the instruction was decoration. Your customer could type your name perfectly and still pay a stranger with one digit wrong.
Confirmation of Payee adds a check to the front of that process. When your customer enters your details, their bank asks the receiving bank whether the name they've typed matches the name held on the account, and shows them the answer before they confirm.
The layering is what people get wrong. The check is a name check sitting on top of the existing routing, so it tells your customer whether the name and the account go together. It doesn't validate the sort code or the account number, and it can't tell your customer whether you're a real supplier or an invoice fraudster who has set up a company with a convincing name. Pay.UK puts the purpose as "greater assurance", and assurance is the right word for what a name match gives you.
The four answers your customer can get
Pay.UK publishes four possible outcomes, and the middle two are where most of the real-world confusion lives.
| Response | What your customer sees |
|---|---|
| Match | The customer "has used the correct account name" and gets confirmation that the details match |
| Close match | The customer is "provided with the actual name of the account holder to check" |
| No match | The customer is "told that the details do not match" |
| Unavailable | The check couldn't be performed, "for example as a result of timeout, customer opt-out or if the account doesn't exist" |
A close match isn't a failure. Your customer sees the account name as your bank holds it and decides whether that's you, so a payment to "Smith Roofing Ltd" against an account held as "Smith Roofing Limited" arrives with a small pause and no drama.
No match stops people. Your customer is told the details don't match, and they can usually still send the payment, though few people do once a bank has warned them. In a business context they'll ring you or email you first, and a two-minute payment becomes a two-day one.
Unavailable covers cases with nothing to do with you at all. A timeout, an opt-out or an account that doesn't exist all return the same answer, so a customer who gets it hasn't necessarily typed anything wrong.
Which payments it covers
The check applies to CHAPS, Faster Payments and Bacs payments, both debit and credit. That's most of what a UK business is paid through.
For you as a supplier, the practical coverage is the everyday one: a customer paying an invoice by bank transfer through their banking app is running the check, whether or not they know what it's called.
How it reached almost every UK account
Confirmation of Payee arrived by regulatory direction and not by market adoption, in two waves, and knowing which wave a bank is in explains why a small number of accounts still behave differently.
Specific Direction 10 from the Payment Systems Regulator required the six largest banking groups to implement the check by the end of March 2020. Those groups covered around 90% of Faster Payments and CHAPS transactions, so a single direction moved most of the market at once.
Specific Direction 17, issued in February 2022, extended it to around 400 more financial firms in two groups: Group 1 by 31 October 2023 and Group 2 by 31 October 2024. Between them, the two directions took the check from a feature of the big banks to something your customer meets nearly everywhere.
Payer Name Verification and direct debit mandates
Confirmation of Payee has a sibling that matters if you collect by direct debit. Payer Name Verification "allows organisations to perform account name-checking before setting up or amending Bacs Direct Debit payments", so the check happens at mandate setup instead of at payment time.
The value of that is timing. A mandate with a mistyped account number or a name that doesn't belong to the account fails when you first try to collect, typically weeks after the customer signed and long after anyone remembers the conversation. Checking the name at the point of setup moves the discovery to the moment your customer is still in front of you.
Registered name or trading name on your invoices
This section covers what's actually in your control. Pay.UK's guidance for business accounts is that customers need "the registered business name or a trading name register to the account" to complete a check successfully.
So the name your customer types has to correspond to something your bank holds against that account. Two names can do the job, your registered company name and any trading name recorded against the account, and anything else is at best a close match.
We should be straight about the status of what follows: Pay.UK states the rule, and the failure pattern below is what we think follows from it, and not a scenario Pay.UK describes. Treat it as our reasoning, not as scheme guidance.
If you trade under a name that differs from your registered name, and your invoices carry the trading name while your bank account is held only in the registered name, your customer is typing a name your bank has nothing to match. On that reading, the likely results are close match or no match, and the more your two names diverge, the worse it goes. "Jane Smith Consulting" against an account held as "J Smith Consulting Ltd" should be fine. "Northside Studio" against an account held as "Ashworth Media Ltd" probably won't be.
Three things follow from that, and all of them are cheap:
- Check what your bank actually holds as the account name, since it may be an abbreviation nobody in your business has looked at for years.
- Ask your bank to register your trading name against the account if you invoice under one. Pay.UK's wording contemplates a registered trading name doing the job.
- Put the account name on your invoice exactly as your bank holds it, next to the sort code and account number, so your customer copies the right thing instead of guessing from your letterhead.
What a mismatch costs you
A failed name check doesn't stop the money, but it does stop your customer, and the cost lands on your collections rather than on your bank account.
The customer who gets a no match has been told by their own bank that something looks wrong. Most people in that position stop and check: an email to you, a reply from you, and a payment landing days later than it would have. If the invoice was already close to its due date, that's a late payment caused by the way your account name is recorded.
There's a version of this you can avoid entirely. When your customer pays through a link, or you collect by direct debit, they aren't retyping your bank details at all, so a name check on manually keyed details never enters the picture. Adfin gives customers a payment link with card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, open banking and bank transfer options, and reconciles what arrives against the invoice. For the customers who insist on paying by manual transfer, and there are always some, getting your account name right on the invoice is the whole job.
Common questions
What does Confirmation of Payee check? Whether the account name your customer typed matches the name held on the account they're paying. It's a name check on top of the existing sort code and account number routing, so it doesn't verify the numbers themselves.
What are the four Confirmation of Payee responses? Match, close match, no match and unavailable. A close match shows your customer the actual name on the account so they can decide, and unavailable covers a timeout, a customer opt-out or an account that doesn't exist.
Which payment types does Confirmation of Payee cover? CHAPS, Faster Payments and Bacs payments, both debit and credit. For most businesses that means every routine way a UK customer pays an invoice from their own bank.
Why do my customers get a close match when they pay me? Usually because the name they typed differs slightly from the name your bank holds, such as Ltd against Limited or a missing initial. Your customer sees the real account name and can carry on, so a close match rarely blocks a payment.
Do I need to register my trading name with my bank? If you invoice under a trading name and your account is held in your registered name, ask your bank to register the trading name against the account. Pay.UK's guidance says customers need the registered business name or a trading name registered to the account.
Is Confirmation of Payee used for direct debit mandates? Not directly. The equivalent service is Payer Name Verification, which lets organisations check an account name before setting up or amending a Bacs direct debit.
This article explains how Confirmation of Payee works for UK businesses being paid and is not legal or financial advice. Scheme rules change, so check current guidance before relying on them. Last updated August 2026.
