NatWest Group is partnering with SurePay to introduce Confirmation of Payee (CoP) for HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC).

The rollout will use a direct access Application Programming Interface (API), to allow HMRC to dynamically check high volumes of outbound payee details to help prevent fraudulent and misdirected payments.

The technology aims to improve efficiency by ensuring the recipient payee’s details match those registered to the account outside of the payment process.

Confirmation of Payee was introduced in June 2020 to combat scammers and guard against customer errors, and typically allows customers to carry out a check on individual payments through their online banking.

As a major UK payment distributor, HMRC will now be able to carry out bulk checks against all their outbound payments, via PaySure’s API.

NatWest said that through today’s announcement, the bank is extending its relationship with the UK Government further, by partnering with its CoP partner SurePay in a bid to improve security, speed, and reduce fraud.

James Hodgson, head of commercial payments at NatWest Group said:“We are delighted to collaborate with SurePay to provide a first-to-market solution to HMRC that will help them reduce fraud and losses using the Confirmation of Payee service.

“NatWest is committed to combating fraud at all levels for our customers and are confident that this new technology will vastly reduce the cost of fraudulent and misdirected payments for this customer.

He added: “NatWest is committed to investing in the development of new and innovative services which are API enabled to allow customers to embed them into their own business.”

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