With the entry into force on September 1, 2026, of Resolution No. 163 of the National Bank of Ukraine dated July 29, 2022, “On Approval of the Instruction on Cashless Payments in the National Currency for Payment Service Users,” banks and payment providers are required to ensure identification and verification of the payer when initiating or executing payment transactions. The Account Name Inquiry (ANI) service from Ukrainian Processing Center (UPC) enables full compliance with these requirements.

According to the regulator’s requirements, financial institutions must confirm that the actual holder of the payment instrument initiates the payment. This includes verifying that the first and last name of the card or account holder match the data used in the transaction or stored by the issuing bank. This is exactly what the ANI service provides — a pre-validation tool that checks whether the payer’s name entered on the merchant’s side matches the data held by the issuing bank. The key advantage of the service is that the verification is performed before the transaction is sent for authorization, significantly enhancing payment security.

In addition, the use of the ANI service provides banks and merchants with several important benefits:
•    reduced fraud levels, especially in Card-Not-Present (CNP) transactions;
•    improved accuracy of payment data and strengthened trust among all participants;
•    higher authorization success rates and increased payment conversion.

ANI is particularly effective in high-risk segments, including food delivery and taxi services (to verify the payer before order fulfillment), microfinance institutions (for additional verification before disbursing funds), and e-commerce and online marketplaces (to prevent fraudulent transactions). Moreover, the ANI service is easy to integrate into the payment infrastructure of online merchants.