NatWest Group partners with Bottomline to reduce payment fraud

By Joy Dumasia

Bottomline, a leading provider of financial technology that makes business payments simple, smart and secure, announced the NatWest Group had adopted Bottomline’s Confirmation of Payee (CoP) solution to service their Agency Institutions in the fight against authorised push payment fraud (APP) across the UK.

Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud has grown considerably in the UK financial services sector and is now considered by Pay.UK to be a material risk on the reputation of the Faster Payment Scheme (FPS). This concern comes at a time where the limit for individual FPS transactions has recently risen from £250,000 to £1 million.

In a bid to drive down APP fraud, UK Finance introduced Confirmation of Payee. This new fraud prevention service allows customers of participating Banks, Building Societies and Credit Unions to double-check, ahead of making a payment, that the account holder’s name matches the owner of the bank account number. 

James Hodgson, Chief Product Officer Take Payments at NatWest Group, said: “Our partnership continues to grow with Bottomline Technologies. The introduction of their SaaS solution for Confirmation of Payee increases the speed at which we want our Agency Institution customers to be adopting the latest beneficiary name checking service. It gives our customers a pedigree solution to protect customer funds from the rising incidents of Authorised Push Payment fraud.”

Paul Fannon, Managing Director of Global Business Solutions, Bottomline, said: “We’re delighted to work with NatWest customers in accelerating the use of Confirmation of Payee across the industry and the UK. We know that fraudsters target less well-protected parts of the payments process, so the goal has always been to identify those gaps and promote mass adoption of fraud prevention initiatives to protect customers and maintain trust in our payment industry. The Agency partnership with NatWest Group is a key accelerator.”