Power in simplicity: confirmation of payee provider SurePay wins at Banking Tech Awards

At the recent Banking Tech Awards, SurePay won in the category of Best PayTech Solution Provider. The accolade recognises the fintech firm’s success in providing a secure and reliable Confirmation of Payee (CoP) platform to financial institutions and organisations making payments and collecting funds across the UK and Europe.

Richard Koldewijn, SurePay: “The benefits for businesses are straightforward, but really potent”

Its key innovation, however, is offering businesses of all sizes direct access to CoP services via an intuitive online portal. The portal’s friendly interface exemplifies a much-needed emphasis on good user experience in the B2B space, where business users can benefit from a simple yet powerful tool for payee confirmation. SurePay’s business development manager, Richard Koldewijn, offers some insights into SurePay’s success.

“Our portal is a really powerful and easy-to-use tool for all manner of organisations which need to make or receive payments, and it’s exciting to see so many of our customers realising major benefits from using it,”Koldewijn says.

Indeed, SurePay’s portal is a world first, in that it features one integrated system with a highly intuitive, user-friendly interface. Using the portal is simple: users simply log on, enter the account number and name or a file containing multiple account data, and receive instant confirmation of whether the details are a match or not. Users can further generate PDFs as proof of check. 

“The benefits for businesses are straightforward, but really potent,” says Koldewijn. “By running safe and secure checks via the SurePay portal, businesses and organisations can reduce the risk of fraud and mispayments.” Ultimately, as Koldewijn highlights, this leads to real business benefits including cost savings and improved efficiencies.

“Time efficiency is also improved,” he says, “since there’s no need to log on to any other apps or banking channels to check payee details.” There is also the possibility of upgrading the portal to include other useful features. 

And the results are clear. According to Koldewijn, SurePay’s customers have seen up to a 90% reduction in drop-out during customer onboarding thanks to the easy CoP process. There has also been a massive 80% reduction in fraudulent orders. “Our customers have given us a really impressive picture of how SurePay has helped their business. Customer data checks now take seconds instead of days or even weeks, and we’re told that far fewer invoices are cancelled or go unpaid – a reduction of 25% in some cases,” he says. 

Currently, in the Netherlands, the portal is offered to large corporates directly and to hundreds of companies. Customers from a vast range of sectors are utilising the service daily, including taxi companies, administrative offices, large industrials, automotive companies, charity foundations, consumer credit providers, energy companies and various government partner organisations.

In the UK, millions of Covid-19 aid funds were previously verified by SurePay, by name but also by business or private account. Currently over 20 banks, along with many more corporates, are using the SurePay portal. “In one bank alone, as many as 100 employees actively use the portal,” Koldewijn says. The portal can also be made available to corporations via their banks – meaning that banks can offer a safe and secure CoP service to their customers as an extra commercial proposition.

SurePay’s clients have seen up to a 90% reduction in drop-out during customer onboarding and an 80% reduction in fraudulent orders

Whilst the portal is promising to gain further traction with businesses across the UK, SurePay already has a strong foothold in the UK CoP space. As well as being used by over 40 UK banks and building societies, the SurePay platform was used by a major official UK entity to help coordinate vast numbers of payments across the entire population. And, SurePay is partnering with Swift to assist UK organisations in making payments to the EU and further afield.

Further, as Koldewijn highlights, whilst there are other CoP providers operating in the UK market, generally CoP is seen as an add-on to other services; with SurePay, CoP is its core offering which means the company is committed to innovating in the CoP space and providing a best-in-class user experience.

Another major offering that SurePay has spearheaded is the provision of IBAN checks through a specialised portal. Working with the same ease and simplicity as the CoP portal, the IBAN portal vastly improves the efficiency of processing cross-border payments.

Further, Koldewijn explains how EU legislation is gearing towards mandating all participating banks in the EU in terms of CoP checks. “We’re connecting with that need and looking at solutions that can support that regulation across various countries,” he says.  

This wide spectrum of customers and robust yet flexible offering shows that SurePay has the capacity and strength to deal with big business requiring large numbers of checks, the knowledge and experience in navigating different legislative frameworks, but also has the agility to cater to smaller entities and organisations with unique requirements across different markets.

The technology behind the SurePay platform and user portal is the result of an innovative and highly experienced team. But it’s really the emphasis on an intuitive user experience that has made SurePay such an appealing solution for so many. 

The real success story, as Koldewijn points out, is making life difficult for fraudsters but easier for business: “major crime is something we can identify and obstruct, but at the same time, SurePay can mitigate mistakes which waste time and generate unnecessary cost, whilst being really easy to use”. Proof of SurePay’s success, he suggests, is further demonstrated in their high customer satisfaction rates.

“Winning in the category for Best PayTech at the Banking Tech Awards is a really great recognition of our successes and we’re incredibly proud of everything we’ve achieved,” he says, “We’re very much looking forward to the opportunities that lie ahead.”

Sponsored by SurePay, the winner of Banking Tech Awards 2023 in the Best PayTech Solutions Provider category