Introduction

The Account Holder Verification (AHV) endpoint allows for the verification of an account holder's identity — either the payer or the payee — before initiating a payment.

This helps reduce fraud and prevents payments from being misdirected, ensuring that funds are either sent to the correct recipient or debited from the correct payer account before processing.

AHV supports two verification types depending on the payment method:

• Confirmation of Payee (CoP): used for GBP payments via Faster Payments — to verify the payee, ensuring money is sent to the correct recipient.
• Verification of Payee (VoP): used for EUR payments via SEPA
  • for SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT) to verify the payee,
  • for SEPA Direct Debit (SDD) to verify the payer,
    ensuring that funds are either sent to or collected from the correct account.

How it works

When an AHV request is submitted, the provided details are validated with the payment scheme and return a verification result via the Webhook service, via the AccountHolderVerification event type. The result will indicate whether the provided details generate a Match, a Close Match, No Match, or anError.

Each request is acknowledged with a unique ID, and the verification result can also be retrieved by polling the GET endpoint with the provided GUID.

The response also includes a reason code that provides further details on the verification result.

Request Rules

When making a request, the following rules apply:

• Either individualName or companyName must be provided — not both.
• Either bban (for CoP) or iban (for VoP) must be provided — not both.

Reason Codes

The reason codes in the response payload provide additional context on the verification result, indicating the level of match or any issues identified during the verification process.