If Verification of Payee did a strict character-by-character comparison, almost nothing would match: 'Jon Smith' vs 'Jonathan Smith', accents, capitalisation and company suffixes would all fail. Instead, name matching is designed to tolerate harmless differences while still catching real mismatches. Here's the shape of it.
Normalisation first
Before comparing, names are typically normalised: trimming whitespace, standardising case, and handling accents and punctuation. This removes noise that has nothing to do with whether two names refer to the same party.
Tolerant, not loose
The goal is to forgive cosmetic differences (case, accents, spacing) without forgiving meaningful ones (a different surname). That balance is exactly what produces the close-match middle ground.
Comparison and the three outcomes
- Match — the names align closely enough to be confident it's the same party.
- Close match — they're similar but not identical, so the verified name is returned for confirmation.
- No match — the difference is significant enough that it shouldn't be waved through.
What this means for your input
Because matching is tolerant of formatting but sensitive to meaning, the best thing you can do is send the most official name you hold — and, for businesses, an organisation identifier. That gives the comparison the cleanest possible input. When you do get a close match, RoxPay returns the verified name, so you can show it for confirmation and store it to match cleanly next time.