Affecting all clients with Current accounts and Rental Accounts
9th May 2024
Re: Alpha Bank London Limited’s compliance with Confirmation of Payee (CoP) as Responder, effective 9th May 2024
Dear Customer,
We write to confirm that Corporate and Personal current and rental accounts held at Alpha Bank London Ltd (ABL) at our dedicated sort code 40-63-95 will be able to be validated by parties wishing to remit a payment to your accounts with effect from 9th May 2024.
The Confirmation of Payee (CoP) initiative allows the account name, sort code, account number and type of account to be validated prior to releasing an electronic payment. This has been introduced over several years by the UK Payment Services Regulator and is designed to reduce the mis-keying of beneficiary and account number information as well as reducing Instances of fraud. Since 2018 the 6 main clearing Banks have had to offer this service to their customers and to payers wishing to make payment to their customers within the UK. The CoP initiative has been established in many other UK Banks since 2023 and ABL have expedited onboarding CoP ahead of requirement by the regulator of October 2024, as this provides greater security for our clients.
Accounts that are in-scope for CoP inclusion are those that may generally expect to receive banking deposits or receipts from the domestic UK Payment schemes (e.g. CHAPs, Faster Payment, etc). ABL will include all types of customer current accounts and rental accounts only. Other accounts are not eligible for CoP confirmation, as they would not be expected to receive direct payments.
How does CoP work?
The remitter will enter the name, sort code, account number and type of account (Business or Personal) of the ABL account they wish to pay into their own Bank’s portal. Once entered a message will be sent to ABL to verify the information that has been entered.
Effective 9th May 2024, the remitter will receive one of the following styled messages in reply to their entered ABL account details:
- Confirmed Match – All details match to those provided by ABL and the payment can continue
- Close Match – The account name entered is a close match to ABL data supplied
- The name of the account is then provided and the remitter may continue to use the previously entered details or change the account name of the payment to match the returned details.
- Entered Details are not matched – The account name entered DOES NO MATCH the data returned by ABL. The remitter is asked to refer to the ABL customer to check the payment information.
We would also draw attention to the following two points included in the revised Terms and Conditions documents, Clause 23 (g) on page 10, that were sent to all customers earlier in 2024:
g) Alpha Bank London will be facilitating Confirmation of Payee (“CoP”) via a third-party arrangement through NatWest Bank, Our new UK Agency Bank partner. Therefore, the bank details of valid name and account combinations will be shared with Our Business Partner daily to ensure that CoP checks are always undertaken on the most current information. As this is an enhanced security measure aimed at combatting fraud and the mis-keying of incorrect information, We will automatically include all in-scope Current and Rent Deposit Accounts into the CoP scheme. You can choose to opt Your account out of the CoP scheme, by contacting Your Relationship Manager, should You wish to.
Alpha Bank London have worked to make this change as transparent and simple as possible for our customers. If you have any questions about these changes, please contact your Relationship Management Team via the usual methods who will be happy to discuss Confirmation of Payee with you.
Yours faithfully,
Steve Hatch
Operations Manager,
Alpha Bank London Ltd
Karthik Gurumoorthy
Head of Operations,
Alpha Bank London Ltd