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This page documents version 2 of the endpoint. Refer to Account Holder Verification (v1) for version 1, including a guide to migrate to version 2.

The Account Holder Verification (AHV) endpoint allows you to verify an account holder's identity before initiating a payment.

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

The AHV supports two verification types depending on the payment method:

• Confirmation of Payee (CoP): used for GBP payments via Faster Payments
• Verification of Payee (VoP): used for EUR payments via SEPA

How it works

After you submit an AHV request, we verify the provided details through either the VoP scheme or CoP service. You can receive the verification result via the Webhook service using the AccountHolderVerification event type, or by calling the AHV GET endpoint. The result will indicate whether the provided details generate a Match, Close Match, No Match, or Error.

See the request example and response example for implementation details.

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:

• verificationName must be provided
• verificationType must be either Personal or Business
• verificationAccount must be provided and must include:
• account: IBAN (for VoP) or UK account number (for CoP)
• financialInstitution: optional BIC (for VoP) or Sort Code (for CoP)
• country: country code of the account

Routing rules:

• If you provide Account Number + Sort Code (GB), the request is processed as CoP
• If you provide an IBAN (including GB-IBANs), the request is processed as VoP

Invalid or mixed combinations (e.g. IBAN + Sort Code) will result in a validation error.

Verification results

When the result of the VoP or CoP is available (status is succeeded or failed), the result object will be populated in the AHV GET endpoint and in the webhook payload.

Details of each property in the result object

Reason Codes (CoP Only)

The following reason codes apply only to Confirmation of Payee (CoP) requests. They are defined by the UK CoP scheme and provide additional context on the verification result, indicating the level of match or any issues identified during the verification process.

Note: VoP (Verification of Payee for SEPA) does not provide the same set of granular reason codes as CoP.