PSR Fines Bank of Ireland UK £3.7m Over Confirmation Of Payee Failings

The Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) has fined Bank of Ireland UK plc (BOIUK) £3,779,300 for failing to implement Confirmation of Payee (CoP) within the mandated timeframe, leaving more than 1.14 million new payees and £6.9 billion in payments without the safeguard.

The enforcement action relates to BOIUK’s failure to comply with the ‘send’ requirements under paragraph 3.1 of Specific Direction 17 (SD17). As a Group 1 payment service provider (PSP), BOIUK was required to have systems in place to send and receive CoP requests by 31 October 2023. However, the bank did not implement outbound CoP functionality until 14 months after the deadline, making it the last Group 1 PSP to achieve compliance.

CoP is a key control designed to reduce authorised push payment (APP) fraud and misdirected payments by enabling customers to verify that the account name matches the intended recipient before funds are transferred. The PSR confirmed the expanded CoP requirement in October 2022, providing directed firms with a year to prepare. SD17, published on 11 October 2022 and effective from 24 October 2022, built on earlier obligations under Specific Direction 10 (SD10) introduced in 2019, which initially applied to the six largest banking groups.

David Geale, Managing Director at the PSR, stated that CoP is a vital safeguard in combating fraud and maintaining consumer confidence in digital payments. He noted that missing the compliance deadline by more than a year exposed customers to heightened fraud risk and made clear that the PSR will use its statutory powers where firms fail to meet critical consumer protection requirements.

The PSR opened its investigation on 10 July 2024. BOIUK agreed to settle at an early stage of the enforcement process and qualified for a 30 percent discount under the PSR’s settlement procedures. Without the discount, the financial penalty would have been £5.4 million.

The decision notice has now been published. The case underscores the PSR’s continued focus on enforcing CoP compliance as part of the broader regulatory strategy to tackle APP fraud and strengthen safeguards across UK payment systems.

Read the press release here.