In the last few days we have had a number of customers express concern that their UK bank was advising them that it might not be safe to proceed with payment to Gaia School of Natural Health's (GSNH) business bank account, as their UK bank was unable to verify the payee's name with the account sort code and account number entered. This is a new process of "confirmation of Payee" which most of the major UK banks have signed up to implementing, in order to mitigate fraud.

Unfortunately not all UK banks have yet adapted their systems for this to work. GSNH's bank The Co-operative Bank Plc is one such UK bank and is scheduled to update their systems sometime before the end of 2020. Consequently, if your UK Bank has got the system up and running it is likely to highlight the risk of sending money to an account where the name of the account holder is not verified, and the message will identify to you, that any monies paid out will not be refunded if lost or stolen.

From the GSNH perspective, the sort code and account number identified during the booking process is correct and valid. We can not advise you to disregard your UK bank's warning, but with commonsense in mind, you may wish to continue through the payment process by making a notional payment (eg. 1p or £1) which GSNH can confirm receipt of. Once we have confirmed the receipt of this small payment you may then proceed with confidence to send the remaining balance. Alternatively you may prefer to select the cheque payment method.

Hopefully this notice will alleviate some of your concerns and make you aware of the existence of this new payment verification process, and reassure you that the bank details supplied by GSNH during the online booking form process are correct and legitimate.

If you have any further concerns about making payments to GSNH, please let us know via the contact form