Virgin Money partners with SurePay to prevent fraud and misdirected payments

By Joy Dumasia

SurePay, the Confirmation of Payee provider, announced that it had supported Virgin Money by implementing its UK Confirmation of Payee solution to protect consumers against fraud and misdirected online payments.

David-Jan Janse, CEO of SurePay, said: “SurePay’s aim is to make online payments safer and easier to use for the benefit of our clients and their customers. Ensuring best-in-class fraud prevention for consumers has never been more important as online spending continues to grow, so does fraudulent activity. We are incredibly proud to be working with Virgin Money. Together we bring a best-in-class solution helping to keep their consumers safe.” 

Confirmation of Payee is a way of giving consumers greater assurance that their payments are being routed to the intended recipient and are not accidentally or deliberately misdirected. The SurePay algorithm is specifically designed for Confirmation of Payee from scratch and fully operates in line with the Pay.UK requirements and specifications.

According to UK Finance, there has been a 71% increase in authorised push payments (APP) fraud during the first half of 2021, with APP fraud overtaking card fraud losses for the first time. SurePay already covers over 99.5% of the Dutch market, having performed nearly 5 billion checks and leading to an 81% drop in fraud to Dutch IBAN’s and 67% less misdirected payments. In the UK, SurePay was selected to protect some of the country’s leading financial institutions’ customers, checking 35% of all bank transfers.  

Since July 2021, the Confirmation of Payee functionality has been extended with a revised capability and simplified processes. This second phase ensures the value of Confirmation of Payee is introduced more widely to new participants to increase the number of customers that can benefit from the extra layer of security. 

Fergus Murphy, Chief Customer Experience Officer at Virgin Money, said: “We are committed to protecting our customers from fraud and Confirmation of Payee is a valuable tool in achieving that. SurePay have extensive experience in providing Confirmation of Payee solutions, both in the UK and other countries, which is why we chose to work with them to implement this important protection for our customers.”