Payer Name Verification - FAQs
Please note: Payer Name Verification is only available for the following bank debit schemes: Bacs (UK) and SEPA (Eurozone).
What is Payer Name Verification?
Payer Name Verification (PNV) is a check that verifies if the payer's account number and name match the account details that their bank has on record. The goal of PNV is to reduce fraudulent activities, such as unauthorised use of bank accounts, by ensuring that the payment is initiated by the legitimate account owner.
How does Payer Name Verification work?
When a payer is going through a billing request flow (e.g.on our hosted payment pages), PNV checks if the entered account details match the details the bank has on record. If there's a mismatch, the payer will be prevented from setting up a mandate. They will receive an error and need to correct the details before they can proceed. The check is also available through our API.
What happens if the payer's details don't match?
If the payer's account details don't match the bank's records, they will be prevented from setting up a mandate. An error message will be displayed, indicating that the details need to be corrected before they can proceed with the mandate setup and payment.
Why does "Cannot check" occur?
This could happen for a number of reasons, such as the responding bank hasn't yet enabled the check, there's a technical timeout, the bank account number/IBAN doesn't exist, or the account is closed/blocked. When this happens we let the mandate setup and payment proceed. This ensures a legitimate payer is not accidentally rejected.
What's the benefit for merchants?
- Less fraud. Verifying that the name matches the account makes it harder to set up mandates with stolen or made-up bank details.
- Fewer chargebacks. "Payer claims they didn't authorise the payment" is one of the most common chargeback reasons. Catching mismatches at set-up reduces these, and protects revenue you'd otherwise lose.
- Low friction. Payers are only notified if there is a mismatch so in most cases, payers don’t even know the check is happening. This helps minimise any impact on payer conversions.
Does it apply to every payer?
Whilst we attempt to do a Payer Name Verification check on every bank account, there are some situations in which we will let payers create mandates without the check. This is to ensure your conversion rates remain high (i.e. the number of payers able to create mandates). These situations are generally limited to when a bank takes too long to respond to a request to run the verification (or their API is down altogether!). There are also some smaller banks that do not yet support Payer Name Verification.
How does Payer Name Verification relate to Verification of Payee (VoP) in SEPA?
VoP is the name-and-IBAN check SEPA banks run under the EU Instant Payments Regulation, confirming details match for the payee receiving a credit transfer. Payer Name Verification uses the same check on the other side: the payer setting up your mandate.
How does it work with modulus checking?
Modulus checking is a procedure for validating a sort code and account number combination. It's useful for Direct Debit as it confirms that the sort code and account number could be a valid combination.
Modulus checking will happen automatically prior to Payer Name Verification checks. Any error that occurs will reflect whether the bank account setup failed due to invalid sort code and account number combinations (Modulus check) or name mismatches (Payer Name Verification).