The name-check that builds trust into payments
When people and businesses send money, one concern remains: is this really the right account?
Verification of Payee (VoP) answers that with a real-time name check before a transfer is sent. The payer enters a name and an IBAN; the system returns a result such as match, close match, or no match, so the payer can correct details or reconsider before funds move.
A real-world scenario: how VoP prevents costly mistakes
Consider this: you receive an invoice from a trusted partner and your company transfers EUR 50,000 to the IBAN on the invoice. Only later do you learn the bank details were swapped by a fraudster and the money went to the wrong account.
This happens every day around the world and costs individuals and businesses billions annually. VoP reduces this risk by checking, before authorization, that the recipient’s name matches the account you’re about to pay. If there’s a mismatch, you are warned in time to stop or fix the payment.
Europe: VoP in context
Across Europe, the shift to instant payments comes with stronger name checks, turning prevention into a standard step before funds move. Verification of Payee is becoming a standard step before funds move, ensuring the name on the account aligns with the name the payer entered.
A defining moment: from 9 October 2025, under the Instant Payments Regulation (IPR), instant euro payments become the norm and they are paired with name-check obligations to strengthen safety. In practice, VoP turns uncertainty into clear guidance: match, close match, or no match. Banks can use those signals to reassure customers, ask for a quick correction, or stop a risky transfer in real time.
In this ecosystem, Optimaize (NameAPI) provides the name-matching intelligence, a payments platform/operator runs the service, and banks embed the results into their payment flows.
Where Optimaize fits
Optimaize provides the matching engine. Our NameMatcher software is supplied to payment platforms, who in turn offer a VoP service to banks and PSPs and embed it into their payment flows. In other words:
- Banks/PSPs: present the name-check to the payer and act on the result.
- Payment platforms (our partners): operate the VoP service.
- Optimaize: delivers the name-matching intelligence that determines whether the entered payee name fits the official account holder name.
What NameMatcher does (and why it’s different)
We don’t just match strings, we understand names. NameMatcher is built on decades of name expertise, large, curated datasets, and continuous research led by linguists and native speakers. That foundation lets us deliver decisions you can trust, not just fuzzy string matching.
- Deep name intelligence, not string matching
We parse structure (given/family/middle), handle name order variations (e.g., given name – family name inversions), initials, abbreviations, prefixes/suffixes, hypocorisms, variations, and honorifics, then compare people, not just raw text. - A global name data
Our matching is powered by extensive, continuously updated databases of names and variants across regions, languages, and scripts, covering diacritics, transliterations, diminutives, nicknames, and orthographic conventions. - Linguists and native freelancers
A team of in-house linguists and a network of native contributors research personal names, curate edge cases, and capture naming conventions across regions, so our models evolve with real-world language and knowledge. - Algorithms built for names
Beyond edit distance, we do context-aware name parsing, phonetics, transliteration, graph-linked variants, and probabilistic similarity to separate likely the same person from look-alike strings. - Explainable, tunable decisions
Scores come with reasons (e.g., “transliteration variant,” “abbreviation match,” “nickname match”), plus configurable matching policies that can be adapted to your use case. - Multiscript and multilingual by design
NameMatcher supports Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic-derived scripts, and understands script nuances, romanization patterns, and local conventions so that IBAN–name matching remains accurate internationally. - Continuously researched, continuously improved
We continuously research names across languages, incorporate real-world learnings and customer feedback, and feed those improvements back into our dictionaries, rules, and models. - Built for real-time and for scale
Stable under pressure: real-time matching for high-throughput systems.
Verified names, safer payments
Optimaize builds software that understands names.
Our NameMatcher combines human language expertise with specialized algorithms and rich data. We power real-time payee-name checks for leading payment platforms and, through them, for the banks and PSPs that serve millions of payers.
Building name matching into your stack: payments, compliance, operations, and beyond? Let’s connect.
Sources
- European Central Bank. Verification of Payee (VoP) Service
- European Payments Council (EPC). Verification of Payee (VoP) Scheme Rulebook