Al Rayan Bank goes live with Confirmation of Payee solution from obconnect
Al Rayan Bank has tapped open banking and Confirmation of Payee (CoP) solutions provider obconnect to enhance payment security and strengthen its anti-fraud measures.
Al Rayan Bank taps obconnect for CoP solution
By integrating obconnect’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) CoP solution, Al Rayan Bank has enabled its customers to verify the credentials of a payment recipient prior to the transaction being completed, as part of the bank’s Respond and Request service.
As the UK subsidiary of Qatar-based Islamic bank Masraf Al Rayan, Al Rayan Bank offers Sharia-compliant commercial banking services and is regulated by both the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA).
In October last year, the PRA directed Al Rayan Bank, along with 31 other UK payment service providers (PSPs), to instate a CoP system by 31 October 2023.
The order is an expansion of its Specific Direction 10 (SD10), which was first issued to the UK’s six largest banking groups in August 2019 as a mandate for CoP, as part of the regulator’s attempt to reduce authorised push payment (APP) fraud and misdirected payments.
The regulator says it is prioritising the implementation of the system by PSPs like Al Rayan Bank due to “the capabilities and size of the financial firms, and because adopting CoP quickly in these firms is likely to have a greater immediate impact on preventing APP scams overall”.
The bank was given a 12-month notice to source a suitable solution to the PRA’s CoP expansion, so its newfound partnership with obconnect is not entirely unsurprising, especially given the imminent nature of the deadline.
Back in January, the FCA slapped a £4 million fine on the bank for “failing to put in place adequate anti-money laundering (AML) controls”.
