What is Confirmation of Payee (CoP)?
CoP is a new industry-wide initiative that enhances payment security by enabling 24/7 real-time account name verification before an NPP payment is initiated. This feature helps reduce manual errors, minimise payment disputes, and ensure payments reach the correct recipient. Compliance with AP+ requirements not only safeguards your business but also provides a competitive advantage by demonstrating a proactive approach to payment security and regulatory compliance.
How Does This Benefit You?
Integrating CoP into your payment processes will:
- Enhance payment security and reduce the risk of fraud.
- Improve accuracy in payments by reducing manual errors.
- Help maintain compliance with AP+ requirements, avoiding potential disruptions.
- Strengthen customer trust and build a reputation for security and reliability.
How Does the CoP Process Work?
When your payers initiate an NPP or Osko payment through their bank, they will be prompted to provide the payee’s name and details based on your guidance. Before the payment is processed, the bank will cross-check the payee information through AP+, returning one of three match statuses:
- Full Match: Payment proceeds as expected.
- Partial Match: The payer may receive a warning but can still proceed.
- No Match: The payer may be warned or restricted from proceeding by their bank.
Providing accurate and recognisable aliases and offering clear guidance to your payers will help reduce the risk of payment disruptions and create a smooth payment experience for your customers.
What Information Should I Provide?
If your Zai account manager has provided you with a spreadsheet to begin the CoP process, you may only need to confirm whether the existing details are correct. For more complex scenarios, you may need to confirm tailored account names or provide additional aliases to optimise payment matching.
Note: The provided names and aliases must accurately identify your business accounts and be easily recognisable to users sending funds through your platform.
Extra guidance for organisations using tailored Account Names and Alias Name Fields
New fields for Virtual Accounts
The contents of the Account Name and optional Alias fields, used to help improve the match rate, are not visible or shared with the end user initiating the payment or their banking service provider. They will only see the outcome of the CoP matching request.
New fields for Virtual Accounts
- Account Name: You can customise this name to improve your matching results. If left blank, we'll use your Trading/Business name as recorded in our system by default.
- Aliases (Optional): Aliases allow you to provide up to three optional alternative names to improve matching results. These could include the User name or a third party who will ultimately receive the funds.
Key Considerations For Aliases:
- When choosing the best aliases, consider how the payer might view the recipient, especially if there are multiple contexts or use cases.
- Aliases don't need to be unique to each payer or Virtual Account in every case, it’s important to consider what will produce the best match results.
- Any alias field left blank will be populated with your trading / business name.
Full Legal Account Name:
This mandatory field represents your Full Legal Entity Name and is automatically generated by Zai based on the Legal Entity Name in our records. It is not part of the payment matching criteria and will not be visible to the person initiating a payment to your platform.
Technical Constraints for Account Name and Alias Fields:
- Format: String alphanumeric only.
- No special characters or symbols: Avoid commas, colons, asterisks, tabs, etc.
- Character Limit: 256 characters max.
Need More Information?
Contact us at support@hellozai.com or reach out to your Account Manager.
For additional reference, see our existing Zai Create Virtual Account API Reference page: API Documentation.