What if I or my customers are concerned about using my personal name when making payments?

Using your personal name is standard procedure for sole traders to receive payments to their business bank accounts. 

It allows the industry-wide Confirmation of Payee initiative to better protect against fraud and errors in payments, which you can learn more about here.

You don’t need to replace your trading name with your personal name. You’re only recommended to provide the personal name registered to your account with your other account details. This way you and your customers can access the benefits provided by Confirmation of Payee.

Using your personal name as part of your account details adds an extra layer of security and accuracy to your payments, creating an even safer and easier means of making and receiving payments.

If you have multiple sole trader accounts, each account will have the same personal name registered to it. However, this shouldn’t cause confusion as each account has its own unique account number and sort code. 

If you have a partner working with you, and you’re concerned that providing your personal name may cause confusion, your Tide invoices already contain your personal name by default, and will continue to contain your trading name.

Please be assured that this is a widely adopted service, and it’s now standard practice for sole traders across over 400 UK payment service providers. Every day, more than 1 million checks are carried out using Confirmation of Payee – and it should be a familiar sight for customers sending money to an account they haven’t paid before.

If your customers are concerned about making payments to your personal name, you can show them this FAQ.

If you do wish to opt out, you’re always free to do so. You can do this through your Tide app by tapping ‘Support’ > ‘Messages’ and sending us a message asking to ‘opt out of Confirmation of Payee’.