What We Do
Since 1989, Bottomline has been modernizing global business payments with connected solutions for more than 800,000 financial institutions and businesses in 92 countries.
Securely and efficiently manage funds disbursements
For Businesses
Streamline the collection and management of single and recurring payments
Direct submission and processing of your UK bank payments for payables and receivables
Centralize and automate all your payment creation, controls, and submissions
Comprehensive connectivity to Swift and other domestic and global financial messaging networks
For Banks & Financial Institutions
Convert legacy financial message formats to modern message standards
Easily view analytics of financial messages with central repository
Reduce fraud and errors through digital account verification
For Banks & Financial Institutions For Businesses
Efficiently screen transactions to identify and manage sanctions risk
Stop payment fraud before it happens. Detect, investigate, and protect against internal and external threats.
View, optimize, and forecast your cash position with all accounts connected in one solution
Who We Serve
Our Company
Ensure compliance, reduce APP fraud and misdirected payments, and improve your customer experience with real-time bank account and name verification solutions like Confirmation of Payee (CoP) and Verification of Payee (VoP).
Our API based connectivity enables pre-validation requests to be sent to the data source of the ultimate beneficiary bank directly on a real time basis ascertaining accuracy in the response received. This includes integration for Confirmation of Payee for PSPs and corporates in the UK, Verification of Payee as part of the European Payments Council’s SEPA Inst mandate and access to Swift’s Beneficiary Account Verification (BAV) via the Swift interface.
Our suite of solutions ensures compliance, reduces friction, mitigates fraud, and ultimately delivers superior customer experience.
As payment professionals worldwide seek to bolster their fraud prevention strategies, the emergence of pre-verification tools like CoP, Beneficiary Account Validation (BAV) and Verification of Payee are pivotal to preventing fraudulent transactions.
Listen to guidance from ESBI-ESBG/European Payments Council, GEVA, EBA CLEARING, and Bottomline as they unpack the latest SEPA Inst timelines. 20% of banks and financial institutions consider the lack of clarity on the requirements for verification of payees to be the most significant barrier to adopting instant payments, and 39% are waiting for further guidance.
In addition to the expanded mandate for nearly 400 selected financial institutions to implement Confirmation of Payee by October 2024, the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) has announced a Mandatory Reimbursement bill that will also come into force in 2024. This bill will place the responsibility of a fraudulent transaction on both the sending and receiving firms, with them splitting the costs of reimbursement 50:50.
Confirmation of Payee (CoP) is an industry-wide initiative to combat APP fraud in the UK that leverages pre-verification to reduce the risk of fraudulent transactions.
CoP acts as a “Name Checking Service,” and allows the payer to check whether the name they’ve been provided matches the account number and sort code. This helps reduce APP fraud and payments from being accidentally sent to the wrong account due to human error.
The UK banking landscape is poised for a significant transformation as the Confirmation of Payee (CoP) system is set to expand, with further reductions of APP fraud in its cross sights. The expansion comes in the form of Specific Direction 17 from the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR), which will add around 360 PSPs to CoP by 31st October 2024, increasing the coverage of CoP to 99% of all CHAPS and Faster Payments.
From September 2024, Pay.UK will offer PSPs the choice of Direct and Indirect participation in Confirmation of Payee.
As a leading provider of both options, Bottomline is well placed to help financial institutions understand the pros and cons of each model and ensure they choose the one that best suits their organisation.
Additionally, our expert team can support PSPs with the latest market trends, the fast-approaching PSR deadline, and updating you on recent activities, including the directory switchover.
Bottomline has already supported 30%+ of CoP members to go “live”—proven experience to provide speed to market.
Compatible with any payment scheme via our SaaS-Based API driven solution.
Full on-boarding with access to our sandbox.
Multi-year roadmap to cover evolving phases and new functionality.
Pay-as-you-go model with no capex or compliance overhead.
Mandatory, if CoP subscriber
Optional at this stage
Many are familiar with the alarming rise of APP fraud in the UK. With the latest official fraud statistics due to be published within the next few weeks, we've gathered a panel of industry experts to debate the issues and the expected interventions from the regulator in the industry this year.
The latest direction from the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) should come as no surprise to the Financial Services industry in their effort to combat the crippling Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud in the UK.
The clock is now ticking with published deadlines of October 2024 for the pool of 400 financial institutions mandated by the PSR.
With the rising patterns of Authorised Push Payments (APP) fraud affecting the UK industry, Zempler Bank wanted a robust technical solution, backed by deep market expertise and 24x7 support. We are delighted to work with Bottomline who brings their Open Banking credentials and innovative matching technology together to deliver this primary objective of protecting our clients.
As a relationship bank, we want to make sure our customers are fully protected against the growing instances of APP fraud and also make it as simple as possible for our customers to send funds to us. Bottomline provides this out of the box with their CoP solution.
There are no rules for Building Societies to opt-out. The most a Building Society can do is opt-out of outbound validations for their customers (if they can only send money to a nominated single, sometimes called a linked account).
APP fraud accounted for losses totaling £485.2 million in the UK in 2022 (Source: UK Finance), as payment scams increasingly moved online. However, only 25% of losses have ever recovered, which highlights the urgency of implementing stronger preventative measures. CoP aims to minimise APP fraud and reduce the volume of payments that don’t reach the intended destination.
Organisations can only opt-out if they prove they have no customers or have nominated/linked accounts. Any opt-out requests must be submitted to Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) for consideration. A Bank, etc., cannot simply assume their opt-out status.
The rule is whenever a new beneficiary is set up. However, we see some Banks re-validating after a period of X days, but this is their choice and not in the rules.
CoP uses Head Office Collections Account (HOCA), i.e., your central account and Secondary Reference Data (SDR). For Building Societies, this is a roll number. For Credit Cards, it is a PAN number, and for Mortgages, FX providers, etc., it may be a customer reference.
In short, whoever is registered at Companies House. This can vary by Bank, Building Society, etc. It’s worth validating/ double-checking that those noted have up-to-date details, as incorrect information has caused delays in some implementations.
We look for a daily file. Although, we have clients with more than one file per day. The intra-day RESTAPI takes 1.5 seconds to update.
In an Open Banking transaction, the customer consents to send a payment. These PISP (Payment Initiation Service Provider) payments are outside CoP requirements.
Pay.UK issues a rule book for the matching engine. Anyone can build their solution provided they follow this rule book and get certified against the simulator. They will also need to consider hardware costs, response dates, system availability, etc., in any self-build.
The other value is that the rulebook needs to be followed to the letter by all parties. Some of the earlier parties are not yet doing this, and the vendors in the market compensate for these differences. That said, any self-build solution could go through the same exploration as the vendors encountered.
Bottomline Technologies Ltd (Registered in England no. 8098450) whose registered office is at 1600 Arlington Business Park, Theale, Reading, Berkshire RG7 4SA.
Speak to one of our experts today.
