Australian Payments Plus taps Swift to develop confirmation of payee service

Australian Payments Plus (AP+), an organization comprising EFTPOS, NPP Australia, and BPAY Group, has chosen Swift to develop a new security measure for Australia’s New Payments Platform (NPP), the country’s infrastructure for fast payments.
The collaboration aims to enhance security by implementing a confirmation of payee service, which verifies the recipient’s identity before processing a payment, thus reducing the risk of fraud.
Swift will facilitate this security measure by comparing the name entered by the payer with the name associated with the payee’s account, utilizing standardized APIs and a centralised account matching service overseen by AP+.
Adrian Lovney, AP+’s Chief Payment and Schemes Officer, highlights Swift’s expertise and describes the partnership as a logical choice. He emphasizes the goal of providing an industry-wide confirmation of payee service to mitigate the risk of misdirected payments.
Swift plans to incrementally develop and validate attributes of the new service throughout 2024. This timeline aims to enable financial institutions to integrate the solution into their banking channels by early 2025.