Integrate UK Confirmation of Payee (CoP) name-checking before initiating a Faster Payment to reduce misdirected-payment risk

Steps

1. Confirm the organization is FCA or NCA regulated and authorized for payment service activities, and either owns a sort code or offers accounts addressable by Secondary Reference Data, to be eligible to join CoP
2. Choose an onboarding path: Direct Participant (build in-house or via a Third Party Service Provider) or Indirect Participant via a Pay.UK-approved CoP Aggregator
3. Call the peer-to-peer CoP API to check the payee's account name, including a personal or business account-type indicator, before initiating or collecting a payment; CoP has no central infrastructure, so requests route directly between participant organizations
4. Surface the match, partial-match, or no-match result to the payer before submitting the underlying Faster Payment, since CoP is a name-checking overlay, not a payment rail itself
5. Consider layering Payer Name Verification for Bacs Direct Debit setups if CoP access already exists, since it reuses the same account-name-checking approach to reduce Direct Debit misdirection and indemnity claims
6. Reference the aggregator directory published by Pay.UK when choosing a third-party CoP solution provider, and periodically re-verify the chosen aggregator's onboarding status