Overview
- Investigations report some banks display recipients’ complete legal names during Verification of Payee checks, potentially exposing sensitive personal data such as second names or deadnames.
- Consumer advocates in Germany say inconsistent warning messages and frequent alerts are confusing customers and risk desensitizing them to real mismatches.
- Banks employ differing matching rules because the law sets no uniform method, despite non-binding guidance urging them not to reveal information the sender did not enter.
- The checks apply only to transfers between payment accounts, so savings or Tagesgeld transfers may return messages that no verification was possible.
- Traffic-light results can require confirmation or block payments, and overriding a mismatch may weaken customers’ chances of compensation in fraud cases; newer standing orders are checked automatically while older ones may need manual updates.