Zepto launches real-time solution to cut payment fraud & errors

Zepto has announced the rollout of Zepto Validate, a real-time account name verification solution designed to help businesses reduce payment fraud and failures.

Real-time verification

Zepto Validate is intended to enhance the recently launched Confirmation of Payee service, which was developed through collaboration between Australian Payments Plus (AP+) and Australia's banking industry. Confirmation of Payee checks account name, BSB, and account number against recipient bank records, delivering a match result before funds are transferred. This measure seeks to prevent scams and accidental payments.

Expanding this approach, Zepto Validate incorporates Zepto's own payment intelligence. This overlay generates a risk score tailored to different merchant types, considering account standing, tenure, and historical fraud indicators. The solution also recommends the most reliable account-to-account payment channel for each situation, and includes a straightforward indication when an account is jointly held. These features are designed to facilitate better decision-making for payment processing.

Minimising failed payments and fraud

The company states that Zepto Validate delivers fewer failed payments and reduced fraud, streamlining customer onboarding processes for businesses. The approach aligns with Zepto's aim to provide secure and reliable account verification close to payment rails.

"Zepto Validate, coupled with Confirmation of Payee, should give you confidence before money moves, not questions after it fails," said Trevor Wistaff, Co‐Founder and Chief Product Officer at Zepto. "By connecting directly with AP+ and layering our own payment intelligence, Zepto Validate helps businesses verify accounts, choose the right rail and reduce risk in a single step. It's faster, cleaner and built for the realities of real‐time payments."

Market adoption

Early uptake has come from Satori, an automated transaction monitoring platform, which will integrate Zepto Validate into its OK2Pay solution. The purpose is to help businesses prevent accidental or fraudulent payments to incorrect suppliers, contractors, or through invoice errors. Marmalade and PointsBet are two further organisations adding Zepto Validate to their range of payment technologies from Zepto.

"Our customers want simple, reliable ways to know who they're paying, or collecting from, before they do so," Wistaff added. "Zepto Validate makes that check instant, actionable, and it slots neatly into existing payment workflows."

Satori's Chief Executive Officer, Gavin Steinberg, commented on the new collaboration with Zepto: "This partnership with Zepto and OK2Pay is exciting as it will help our customers mitigate the risk of errors and bank account compromise in real time. With Zepto, OK2Pay will now be able to speed up the verification time, exponentially increase confidence levels when verifying and making payments, and ultimately help to prevent fraud."

Looking ahead

Zepto has plans to further develop its Insights layer, aiming to provide richer risk modelling and enhanced channel intelligence for programmatic and secure payment operations at scale. According to the company, Zepto Validate is currently available for businesses in Australia both as a standalone service and as an integration through Zepto's application programming interface (API), which can be completed in under a day.