Confirmation of Payee: why your bank now spells back the recipient
When you enter an IBAN, modern banks reply with the registered name on that account. This small UX change is the single biggest anti-fraud control of the last decade.
You enter an IBAN. The transfer form shows: "This account is registered to Maria Lopez — is this correct?" If the name does not match the payee you expected, you stop. Simple, obvious, and until recently, missing from most European bank apps.
Why it took so long
Confirmation of Payee requires every bank in Europe to expose the registered name on each IBAN via a shared API — then every sending bank has to call that API before showing the result to the user. It is a coordination problem across hundreds of banks, not a technology problem. The UK rolled it out first in 2020; the full eurozone mandate kicked in with the Instant Payments Regulation in 2026.
What it stops
Invoice fraud (criminal intercepts an invoice, swaps the IBAN, sends to the real customer — now the mismatched name is visible before the money moves). Typo transfers (one wrong digit in the IBAN that happens to belong to someone else's account). Impersonation scams (fake "bank support" asking you to transfer to a "safe account" that is actually theirs).
What it does not stop
Scams where you are told a specific name belongs to the real recipient. Business accounts where the registered name is a trading name rather than the familiar brand (minor friction, worth checking). Transfers to accounts in jurisdictions outside the Confirmation of Payee scheme (international SWIFT transfers do not yet have this).
What to do when the name does not match
Stop. Do not proceed and figure it out later — call the person you are paying and confirm the IBAN verbally. The 90 seconds of friction has saved real people from losing five-figure amounts to invoice scams.