The new ‘Verify Account Name’ service will help prevent TSB customers sending money to the wrong bank account or falling victim to payment fraud.

Currently, when making payments, the account name is not checked when sending an electronic payment - and fraudsters have become increasingly sophisticated in using this to trick people into sending money to the wrong account.

The service will protect TSB’s customers who are targeted by Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud. According to UK Finance data[i], there were 84,624 cases of APP fraud in the UK in 2018 with £354.3m lost to victims as a result.

Applying Vocalink’s data science capabilities, which are trained on over 20 billion transactions amounting to trillions of pounds in value, to our network level view, the solution will match the name of the account holder to the sort code and account number with a higher degree of accuracy than a simple direct name match.

The pioneering technology builds on the success of Vocalink’s anti-money laundering solution which enables suspicious payments to be tracked as they move between bank and building society accounts.

Suresh Viswanathan, TSB’s chief operating officer, said: “We’re leveraging our modern platform to deliver the best solutions for our customers. With over 230,000 payments made every day, we are providing the latest cutting-edge technology to help prevent TSB customers from sending money to the wrong account and to safeguard them from fraudsters.”

Gregor Dobbie, CEO at Vocalink, a Mastercard company, said: “By adopting our Verify Account Name solution, TSB is creating hurdles for fraudsters and in doing so, leading the way in the fight against fraud and protecting its customers. TSB’s customers can now be confident that there is an additional layer of proven security in place to protect them from losing money to fraudsters, or accidentally sending money that they then can’t get back.

“Our service is highly accurate and delivers benefits to financial institutions beyond customer protection, as we know that identification and prevention are more cost effective than dealing with errors or fraud once they’ve occurred. It also builds on the success of our anti-money laundering solution, live in the UK, which enables suspicious payments to be tracked as they move between bank and building society accounts regardless of whether the payment amount is split between multiple accounts, or those accounts belong to the same or different financial institutions. Trace Financial Crime accurately pinpoints individual accounts involved in suspected illegal activities, providing new intelligence to financial institutions’ fraud teams. By working together, leveraging expertise from across the Mastercard business and adopting the latest crime-fighting solutions, we will not only identify and prevent instances of fraud, but also show fraudsters that the industry is ahead of the game.”

In April, TSB announced a UK banking first, a Fraud Refund Guarantee, to ensure the Bank’s 5.2 million customers are protected if they are an innocent victim of fraud - whether it’s unauthorised transactions on their accounts or customers tricked into authorising payments to fraudsters.