NatWest Releases Confirmation of Payee API

London-headquartered NatWest announced on Monday that it had launched an API that will allow commercial customers to embed Confirmation of Payee into their own systems and processes.

According to the press release, by using the new NatWest API, commercial clients will be able to carry out bulk checks on the details of outbound payees for payments made via Bacs, Chaps and Faster Payments. In addition, the UK banking industry introduced Confirmation of Payee in June 2020 to combat scammers and guard against customer errors. Through online banking, banking customers can verify individual payments by ensuring the details provided by the sender match those of the payee.

“Confirmation of Payee has been a game-changing innovation in the battle against fraud and scams in the UK, and today we’re delighted to launch our own API that will allow commercial customers to implement this functionality into their own systems. Not only will this detect fraudulent and misdirected payments, but CoP is also proven to reduce operating costs and improve the digital journey for customers,” Gaurav Gaur, the Head of Commercial Payments at NatWest Group, commented.

Removing Additional Hold Time for e-FX

In February, NatWest Markets announced that it will eliminate the holding period, or latency buffers, for eFX. As part of an updated disclosure, the bank stated that further information regarding the latency buffers applied historically will be provided upon client request. Moreover, NatWest Markets has updated its disclosure and provided details about the FX transactions.

“NatWest Markets may, [at] its discretion, improve the FX rate requested by the client should the FX rate at which NatWest Markets is prepared to trade improve for the client in the period between the submission of a transaction request by the client and the acceptance of such [a] request by NatWest Markets. This is known as price improvement and results in an improved FX rate for the client in comparison to the FX rate originally requested,” the company commented.