Confirmation of Payee: Checking the Name Behind the Alias
Most payment fraud doesn't break cryptography — it exploits a gap between the account details and the person. You can enter a perfectly valid account number and sort code and still send money to the wrong party, because banks historically paid on the number and ignored the name. Confirmation of Payee (CoP) closes that gap: before the money leaves, it checks that the name you expect matches the name on the account.
Match, close match, no match
CoP is deliberately three-valued, not a yes/no. A match means the name is right. A close match means it is nearly right — a shared surname, a middle name dropped, "Jane" vs "Janet" — and the payer is shown the name on record so they can decide. A no match is a stop sign. Crucially, a no-match must not reveal the real account holder's name, or CoP becomes a name-fishing tool.
Why the alias directory makes it better
An alias (proxy) directory maps a friendly identifier — a phone number, an email, an @handle — to an underlying account. On its own that is convenient. Combine it with CoP and it becomes safe: resolving @jane yields the account and the name on record, so the platform can confirm the payee in the same step it looks them up. One resolve call answers both "where does this go?" and "is this who I think it is?"
How Kibipay implements it
Kibipay's directory resolves any alias — phone, handle, email, or bank account — to a registered entry. The Confirmation-of-Payee check takes an alias plus the name you expect, resolves the holder, and compares the names order-insensitively: exact tokens are a match, a shared name part is a close match, everything else is a no-match. The on-record name is only returned on a match or close match — never on a no-match. That is the same signal a UK bank shows you today, available across every rail the directory covers, not just domestic bank transfers.
The bigger picture
CoP is a small feature with outsized impact: it turns addressing from a blind act into a verified one. Layer it under a QR request or a request-to-pay, and the payer never types an account number at all — they scan or pick a name-verified payee. Fewer misdirected payments, less authorised-push-payment fraud, and a payment experience that finally matches how people think: you pay a person, not a number.