Countries\Banks that don't check beneficiary name?

[Silvio]

I'm hearing that some countries don't check account holder name when you receive wires, so you can use personal account to receive wires meant for a company. Or just use it to hide your identity and receive wires when you pretend to be a company.

Apparently that was a thing (maybe still a thing) in UK, Poland. Any other countries where this happens?

 

[Sols]

All banks have the ability to do it. You're less likely to run into it with big banks, since they have far more transactions and far fewer human resources per transaction (as well as lower risk per individual transaction in the grand scheme) than a small bank, which has greater risk exposure per unique transaction.

In the UK specifically, there has been a push from consumers and regulators to improve beneficiary checking. Confirmation of Payee - Pay.UK ”” Not quite the same but it's the same vein.

With increased automation, it's not exactly difficult to assign a transaction a higher risk score if the beneficiary name field of a transaction hitting a personal account contains words like "Limited", "LLP", "LLC", "Partnership", and so on. Maybe nothing triggers the first time, but it's only a matter of time.

It used to be easy to have dual companies with the same name, but even that's easy to automate checks for now.

Stick with big banks but don't rely on it working long term.

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This is the probably the answer to your question.

 

[Martin Everson]

maxmmm said:
Apparently that was a thing (maybe still a thing) in UK, Poland
Click to expand...

I wouldn't bother in UK. I talked about this back in 2018 (see below link). Last year Revolut introduced name check on GBP local payments. I remember testing by entering a wrong account name but correct account number and sort code and then system pulled back the full correct account name overwriting my test one 😳. They have since disabled the functionality I think or perhaps check in background instead of forcing user to use account name they found. I guess they can then find the criminals and close those accounts if you enter a wrong name.....lol.

https://www.offshorecorptalk.com/th...e-is-it-a-good-offshore-bank.19847/post-83872
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45900955

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Please note my posts should not be taken as financial or tax advice. Please seek professional advice in that respect.