Approve an outbound payment
To enhance security and compliance, we have implemented a mandatory approval process for all outbound payments. Your outbound payment will not be sent until you provide explicit confirmation that you have reviewed the payment details and agree to proceed, because:
Instant outbound payments cannot be canceled once initiated, as we immediately start the money transfer process. The approval step allows you time to double-check the payment details before it is too late.
As part of our compliance process, we conduct various verifications to minimise the risk of misdirected payments. Currently, we implemented Confirmation of Payee (CoP) for the UK, which offers greater assurance that payments are directed to the intended recipient.
Approval Process
An outbound payment can only be approved after all verification checks are completed. This ensures that you can review the payment details and verification results before giving us the go-ahead. The outbound payment will enter the pending_approval state, and you will receive the set_to_pending_approval webhook notification. Once in this state, you can grant the approval for the payment.
Proposed steps:
Upon receiving the
set_to_pending_approvalwebhook, retrieve the payment details and carefully review the response, with special attention to the verification results. For more guidance on how to retrieve payment details, please refer to this link .If you are ready to proceed with the payment, use the designated API endpoint to approve it.
1POST https://api.gocardless.com/outbound_payments/{outbound_payment_id}/actions/approve HTTP/1.1If you notice an error in the details or have concerns regarding the verification results and do not wish to proceed with the payment, you can cancel it. For more guidance on the cancellation process, please refer to this link .
Upon successful approval, the payment will transition to the next appropriate state.
How to understand the verification results
Once background verification checks are complete, you can view the results in the outbound payment response under the verifications object.
Currently, there is one type of verification: recipient_bank_account_holder_verification. It confirms whether the recipient's account holder name matches their bank account details and returns one of the following results:
full_match- the account name exactly matches the details provided.partial_match- the account name is similar but does not match to the details provided.no_match- the provided name does not match the account details.unable_to_match- the verification could not be performed due to recipient bank issues or technical issues.
If the result is a partial match, we will also provide the actual_account_name so you can decide if you need to correct the recipient's bank account details.
Please remember, if the verification result is negative, we won’t prevent the outbound payment from proceeding. It’s entirely up to you to decide how to handle your payment. Our role is to provide you with enough details so you can make an informed decision, which is why approval can still be granted even in cases of no_match.