The Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) has fined Bank of Ireland UK £3.7 million for failing to implement Confirmation of Payee by the required deadline.
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The Irish bank initiated CoP 14 months after the 31 Ocober 2023 deadline. As a result, the safeguard was not applied to transactions involving more than 1.14 million new payees, with payments totalling approximately £6.9 billion.
Payment service providers were given one years notice by the PSR to put the measure in place. Bank of Ireland UK were the last Group 1 payment service provider to achieve compliance.
David Geale, managing director at the PSR sys: “Confirmation of Payee is a vital tool to combat fraud and misdirected payments, giving people confidence that their money is going exactly where they intend.
“Bank of Ireland UK had plenty of time to put the system in place, missing the deadline by more than a year put its customers at increased risk of fraud.”
Bank of ireland agreed to settle and thus qualified for a 30% early settlement discount. Without the discount, the PSR would have imposed a financial penalty of £5.4m.