NatWest has launched an API that allows commercial customers to integrate Beneficiary Confirmation into their own systems and processes.
Beneficiary confirmation was introduced across the UK banking industry in June 2020 to combat fraudsters and protect against customer mistakes.The technology allows bank customers to check individual payments through the e-banking platform, ensuring that the account details entered by the sender correspond exactly to those of the beneficiary.
NatWest’s new API will allow merchant customers to perform mass checks on outgoing beneficiary details for payments made using Bacs, Chaps and Faster Payments.
“The beneficiary’s confirmation was an innovation that changed the facts in the fight against fraud in the UK and today we are pleased to launch our own API that will allow commercial customers to implement this feature in their own systems.This will not only detect fraudulent and incorrect payments, but CoP has also been shown to reduce operating costs and improve the digital journey for customers.”, said Gaurav Gaur, NatWest Group’s head of commercial payments.
Businesses can apply to use NatWest’s API to confirm the beneficiary, they must of course have the technical capacity and resources within their business to implement the API at their own cost.