Romanian banks offer their customers a new facility to verify the name of the beneficiary owner of the payment through the Beneficiary Name Display Service (SANB), which aims to prevent fraud among customers who make electronic payments and reduce erroneous transactions generated by the wrong entry of the IBAN beneficiary’s account. In the pilot phase, the SANB is currently available at CEC Bank, ING Bank and Libra Internet Bank. Starting with the year 2023, this service will be extended to the other banks, as well.

The Beneficiary Name Display service is made available to banks connected to the Clearing House of interbank payments by TRANSFOND, on a membership basis. The service is administered by the Romanian Association of Banks, as an optional additional service to SEPA RON credit transfer schemes, based on the Convention on National Payment Schemes and the mandate given by the National Bank of Romania.

The SANB database managed by TRANSFOND is created based on the information sent by the payment service providers in Romania that offer this service. The functionality is immediate when a payment is initiated from the online channel of the participating banks (Mobile or Internet Banking) and is offered free of charge to customers.

Practically, SANB ensures the provision and automatic display in the electronic payment order of the payee’s first and a part of last name, when the payer enters the payee’s IBAN account. In the case of a payment to a legal entity, part of the company’s name will be displayed to the payer for validation. The SANB service is available 24/7 among service participating banks.

One of the types of online fraud through the manipulation of the payer involves sending an e-mail or SMS requesting, on behalf of known beneficiaries such as utility providers or other service providers, the payment of invoices, indicating the IBAN codes of some of the criminals’ own accounts, different from those of the entitled beneficiaries.