The meaning of the different status types is as follows:
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.
Available - You will see this status if you have not yet been onboarded to use Payment Links
Pending - This means your onboarding process to use Payment Links is underway between Tide and our payment provider
Active - You’ll see this status when you have been successfully onboarded and Payment Links is available to use
Unavailable - If you see this status, it means that your member access has been deactivated, usually as a result of regulatory obligations that we have to comply with. Should this occur, then our Member Support team will work with you to resolve the issue.
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’.