The New Zealand Banking Association (NZBA) has confirmed the forthcoming launch of a new Confirmation of Payee (CoP) service, a payments verification technology, for the country’s retail banks.

The CoP will be available to New Zealand’s retail banks – namely, ANZ, ASB, Bank of China, BNZ, CCB, The Co-operative Bank, Heartland Bank, ICBC, Kiwibank, Rabobank, SBS Bank, TSB, and Westpac – from the end of November, with a complete rollout expected by Easter 2025.

The technology will be made available to customers in phases, the NZBA confirmed, “to ensure proper testing and customer satisfaction”.

Similar in scope to Australia’s CoP scheme (announced in late 2023), NZ’s own pre-payment confirmation service will enable payers to confirm that account names match account numbers before initiating domestic account-to-account payments.

The system will notify payers in real-time of account name and number mismatches, using bank records data, and provide notifications of whether a ‘match’, ‘partial match’ or ‘no match’ is detected.

Should a payee’s bank not yet offer the CoP service, payers will receive a ‘cannot check payee details’ notification.

UK-based Open Banking and CoP specialist fintech obconnect has been enlisted by the NZBA to “build and manage” its CoP ecosystem.

Commenting on the partnership, obconnect said it would play “a critical role in ensuring the integrity of payments and preventing fraud, furthering New Zealand’s mission to enhance security and trust in its financial systems through cutting-edge Open Banking technology”.

The phased rollout takes its cues from the UK’s own Confirmation of Payee service, which obconnect was also involved in developing.

“The technology build and integration of the new service differs across banks, so it’s unsurprising that each bank’s testing and delivery phase looks slightly different,” said NZBA chief executive Roger Beaumont.

According to Beaumont, this in turn means that NZ’s CoP will likely not be made available across all online banking platforms simultaneously.

“It’s crucial that all banks gain assurance the system is working as it should, across their online and mobile banking platforms and services, before rolling it out broadly. This will ensure a smooth implementation particularly, in New Zealand, where so many people have more than one bank,” he said.