Change in your Bank Transfers from this Thursday

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: As part of a European measure, a service for verifying the beneficiaries of your bank transfers will be applied from Thursday

It will now be necessary to avoid making transfers banking to his mother or a craftsman by simply “Mom” or “Electrician”, but specify the exact identity of your beneficiaries. From Thursday, a beneficiary verification service decided at the level european will be applied. We will break it down of what you need to know.

What changes?

From the 9th October and in application of a European regulation, all banks in the euro zone will implement this new service which will require entering a name for any transfer.

“This system aims to secure bank transfers by verifying that the name of the beneficiary provided by the customer corresponds to the IBAN [account number] of the recipient account”, to provide “reinforced protection against fraud”, specified the French banking federation (FFB) at the end of September.

When an individual makes a transfer (instantaneous or traditional), their bank will automatically query the beneficiary’s bank to check in real time the match between the name entered and the IBAN number. If the IBAN and the name of the account holder do not match at all or not quite, the issuer of the transfer will be informed immediately and can then make the necessary corrections.

The customer may “decide to correct or confirm his transfer”, and “in the event of a mismatch, the customer retains the freedom to execute the transfer, but with full knowledge of the facts”, underlines the FBF.

What’s the point?

This free service should make it possible to avoid frauds, “in particular those linked to identity theft or manipulation of RIB”, adds the federation. The Banque de France estimates the damage at 183 million euros in 2024.

It also helps reduce entry errors when adding a new beneficiary. Thus, this system also serves to “alert”, and “empower the user” who must check with the beneficiary of the transfer that the information concerning him is correct, before validating it, or renounce it, according to Julien Lasalle, secretary of the National Committee for Payment Methods, within the Banque de France.

For beneficiaries already registered, banks will ask to complete or correct the first and last name. The FBF therefore recommends “using complete and accurate names for beneficiaries”, and “checking mismatch alerts before validating a transfer”.

Is it everywhere in the European Union?

Please note, however: SEPA countries located outside the European Economic Area, such as the United Kingdom and Switzerland, are currently not subject to the obligation to carry out beneficiary verification.

This is also not provided for in the case of a transfer between the French territories falling within the euro zone and the French communities in the Pacific (New Caledonia, French Polynesia and the Wallis and Futuna Islands) falling within the Pacific Franc zone.