Confirmation of Payee (CoP)

BY MICHAEL SHANG · SIXTEEN YEARS IN COMMERCIAL BANKING · UPDATED 2026-11-06

// THE SHORT ANSWER

Confirmation of Payee is a check, made before a bank transfer is sent, of whether the name the payer has entered matches the name on the receiving account, returning a match, a close match or no match. It was introduced in the UK from 2020, and banks rolled it out in New Zealand from late 2024 and in Australia from mid-2025. It targets misdirected payments and scams such as fake invoices with changed bank details. A warning does not block the payment, but a payer who sends it anyway may find lost money harder to recover.

BASIS  Practitioner judgment from sixteen years in commercial banking, set out in How Bankers Think (Highbank Press, 2026). Every borrower on this site is a composite constructed for teaching, not a client. The market is mid-market commercial lending as practised in New Zealand and Australia; where a convention differs elsewhere, the page says so.