Global Database launches Know Your Payee, a fraud check that verifies the company and the owners behind a bank account

09/08/2026 09:00 · 12 min read

Global Database has launched Know Your Payee, a payment-fraud control for banks, payment networks, payment service providers and corporate accounts-payable teams. It adds a step that existing controls do not perform: after the bank confirms that the account name matches, Know Your Payee reads the official company register to establish who is actually being paid.

The launch responds to a gap that invoice redirection and mule-account fraud exploit routinely. Verification of Payee in the EU and Confirmation of Payee in the UK check that the name on a payment instruction matches the name on the account. Both work as designed. But a fraudster who has registered a company and opened an account in its name passes them, because the account is real and the name matches. The payment looks ordinary — it is the first one.

The timing follows two regulatory shifts that have put the account-name check at the centre of payment fraud controls. In the EU, Verification of Payee became mandatory for euro payment service providers in October 2025 under the Instant Payments Regulation. In the UK, the Payment Systems Regulator’s reimbursement rules for authorised push payment fraud took effect in October 2024, moving the cost of a redirected payment onto the sending and receiving firms. Both raise the standard for what a payer is expected to know about a payee before releasing funds.

"Invoice fraud does not fail the name check. It passes it. The fraudster registered the company, so the name matches and the account is real. What gives him away is in the register — how old the company is, who is behind it, what it has filed — and until now nobody read that before the money left."Nicolae Buldumac, Founder and CEO, Global Database

What Know Your Payee checks

The product runs four stages from a single request containing the beneficiary name, the account identifier and the country:

The account. The account-name check with the payee's bank or an authorised provider, returned as match, close match or no match and reported exactly as received. Global Database does not issue the regulated result; it takes the bank's.
The company. The account name is resolved to a legal entity in the official register of the country, then the full record is read: status, incorporation date, registered address, activity codes, VAT and every year of filed accounts.
The owners. Directors and officers, shareholders and beneficial owners at 25% or more, and the group structure, each entity resolved in its own register. A cross-registry screen then follows every director to the other companies they hold.
The watch. Payee Monitoring keeps the payee under observation after the payment and pushes every change of status, address, control or filing to the customer's webhook.

Account VoP / CoPName matched to the account by the payee's bank

Matched

Company Know Your PayeeLegal identity, status, age, address and filings from the official register

Verified

Owners Know Your PayeeDirectors, shareholders and beneficial owners — and what else they control

Resolved

Decision

ProceedReviewHold

Twenty-two signals, five assessments, one decision

From the registry record the product derives 22 Entity Risk Signals in five groups: identity and status, people and ownership, officer network, address and footprint, and filed accounts. Each signal shows the fact behind it rather than a score — incorporated 26 days ago; name one character from an active company; registered office shared with several hundred other companies; no accounts on record; director holds five companies that are no longer active.

Identity and status

Bank name match — the bank's own result, as reported
Registry status — active, dormant, intermediate or dissolved
Incorporation age — hard flag inside the first 90 days
Lookalike name — screened against the live register
VAT and contact footprint — VAT number, website, telephone, email

People and ownership

Director churn in the last 12 months
Beneficial ownership at 25% or more, and tenure of control
Date-of-birth anomalies — under age, over 90, or shared on one board
Group structure — each entity resolved in its own register

Officer network

Serial formation — three or more incorporations in 24 months
Short-lived companies — formed and exited within a year, twice or more
Directorships at companies no longer active
Appointments in secrecy jurisdictions

Address and footprint

Shared registered address — counted on the first address line
Registered-office change since monitoring began
Secrecy jurisdictions anywhere in the group
Multi-country footprint

Filed accounts

Accounts overdue against the national filing deadline
Filing history and gaps in the sequence
Dormancy and reactivation on the balance sheet
Negative net assets
Revenue undisclosed under small-company exemptions

The signals feed five assessments that are reported separately and never summed: Payment link, Company identity, Corporate continuity, Financial resilience and Evidence coverage. The first three are stop conditions; an adverse result on any one holds the payment. The last two inform the reviewer. Together they resolve by rule to one decision — Proceed, Review or Hold — that a payments team can act on and an auditor can read.

The product also states plainly what it does not know. Evidence coverage distinguishes between a record the registry does not publish, a registry connection that was temporarily unavailable, and a jurisdiction that does not provide the record at all. Unavailable evidence is never presented as adverse evidence.

Built on first-party registry data

Know Your Payee draws on Global Database's company intelligence platform: more than 600 million company profiles sourced directly from over 400 government registries across more than 200 countries and territories. Bank account verification is available in 49 countries. Every field in a result names the registry it came from, the date it was read, and links to the official record.

600M+company profiles the payee is matched against

400+official government registries read directly

200+countries and territories covered

49countries where the bank account itself is verified

22Entity Risk Signals derived from each payee's registry record

5 → 1five assessments, one decision: Proceed, Review or Hold

Who it is for

Payment networks and schemes can embed the check at network level, so every corporate on the rail gets the account, the company and the owners verified in one step. Banks and PSPs can extend the Verification of Payee result they already return with the company behind it. Accounts-payable and procurement teams can run it at supplier onboarding and on every change of bank details, through the API or as a CSV of beneficiaries in and results out. Marketplaces and platforms can verify the legal entity and owners behind a seller before releasing payouts.

Availability

Know Your Payee is available now through the Global Database API and as a file-based service. Global Database is offering prospective customers a six-week back-test: they supply labelled historical business payees — names and account identifiers only — and receive the signals and the five assessments for every row, so incremental detection and false-positive reduction can be measured against existing controls before any integration work. Details at globaldatabase.com/bank-account-verification.

Send us a sample. We will send back the signals.

A six-week back-test on your own historical payees. Names and account identifiers in; the 22 signals and five assessments out. No integration work, no commitment.

Start a back-test

About Global Database

Global Database provides first-party company intelligence sourced directly from official government registries worldwide. Its platform covers company profiles, directors and officers, shareholders, UBOs, financial statements, corporate linkages and firmographics across global markets, and is used by enterprises to verify businesses, enrich internal systems, map ownership structures, assess credit and compliance risk, and prevent payment fraud. Global Database is the trading name of Global Data Intelligence Limited, registered in England and Wales, company number 09410808.

Frequently asked questions about Know Your Payee

Bank account verification, the company register, and how the two combine to stop payment fraud.

What is Know Your Payee from Global Database?

Know Your Payee is a payment-fraud control that runs before a business payment is released. In one call it confirms the bank account with the payee's own bank, then verifies the company behind the account against official government registries: legal identity, directors, shareholders and beneficial owners, group structure and filed accounts. It returns five separate assessments and one decision: Proceed, Review or Hold.

How is Know Your Payee different from Verification of Payee or Confirmation of Payee?

Verification of Payee (EU) and Confirmation of Payee (UK) check that the name on a payment instruction matches the name on the account. Know Your Payee takes that result from the bank and adds what the name check cannot see: whether the company is newly formed, imitates a real supplier, shares its address with hundreds of others, has filed accounts, and who its directors and owners are. It works alongside the bank check, not instead of it.

What is bank account verification and how does Know Your Payee perform it?

Bank account verification confirms that an account exists, is open and is held under a given name. Know Your Payee obtains this result from the payee's bank or an authorised provider and reports it exactly as received, as match, close match or no match. Global Database does not issue the regulated Verification of Payee result itself.

How does Know Your Payee help prevent invoice redirection fraud?

Invoice redirection uses a real company and a real bank account, often registered days earlier, so the name check passes. Know Your Payee reads the company register: incorporation date, lookalike name, shared registered address, missing accounts and the director's other companies. Those signals hold the payment before it is released.

What are the five assessments in a Know Your Payee result?

Payment link (does the bank hold this account under this name), Company identity (does an active legal entity exist behind the name), Corporate continuity (has the entity been stable, including director, ownership and officer-network signals), Financial resilience (what the filed accounts say) and Evidence coverage (what the registry could and could not supply). They are reported separately and never added into a score.

What are Entity Risk Signals?

Entity Risk Signals are the 22 registry-derived checks behind the result, in five groups: identity and status, people and ownership, officer network, address and footprint, and filed accounts. Each signal shows the registry fact behind it, such as "incorporated 26 days ago" or "address shared by 834 other companies".

Which countries and banks does Know Your Payee cover?

Company verification covers more than 600 million company profiles from over 400 government registries in more than 200 countries and territories. Bank account verification is available in 49 countries.

Does Know Your Payee check the directors and beneficial owners of a payee?

Yes. It reads directors and officers, shareholders and persons with 25% or more control from the register, then follows each director to every other company they hold across registries. From that network it derives four signals: serial formation, short-lived companies, directorships at inactive companies and appointments in secrecy jurisdictions.

What does Payee Monitoring do after the payment?

Payee Monitoring keeps the payee under watch after verification. Status, name, registered address, VAT, directors, shareholders, group structure and filed accounts are re-checked and every change is pushed to your webhook with its source, so a change of office or control reaches you before the next payment.

Who is Know Your Payee for, and how can it be integrated?

Payment networks and schemes, banks and PSPs, accounts payable and procurement teams, and marketplaces paying out to sellers. It runs through the Global Database API or as a CSV of beneficiaries in and results out. Global Database offers a six-week back-test on a customer's own historical payees before any integration work.