Prometeo Debuts Ownership-Check Feature for ACH Payments

Uruguay-based FinTech Prometeo on Thursday (Dec. 4) introduced Name Match, a new ownership-evaluation feature within its Bank Account Verification API designed to improve payment accuracy and reduce fraud for businesses moving money across U.S. bank accounts. The capability adds a new layer to Prometeo’s verification flow by checking whether a beneficiary’s name aligns with the official account holder name on file before a payment is initiated.

The launch reflects rising pressure on businesses to strengthen pre-payment controls as ACH volumes expand and fraud attempts increase. Nacha, the governing body for the Automated Clearing House network, has encouraged account validation and pre-transaction checks to reduce misdirected payments and expensive returns. Prometeo said Name Match supports these practices by producing a clear, real-time indicator—Match, Partial Match, No Match or No Data — that businesses can feed into payout, onboarding or treasury workflows.

“Today, verifying that a bank account exists is no longer enough,” Prometeo CEO Ximena Aleman told PYMNTS. “As ACH volumes grow and payment flows accelerate, institutions need to understand the likely association between an account and its intended beneficiary before funds move. Errors from mis-typed information, misdirected payouts, or fraud attempts using substituted account numbers become more costly at scale.”

Prometeo said the tool draws on trusted banking network data sources to evaluate likely ownership without requiring users to log in or authenticate via a third-party interface. This distinction matters for companies that need to verify thousands of accounts at scale. Login-based tools can work for individual consumers linking their personal accounts, but introduce friction when enterprises are processing mass payouts, supplier onboarding, or marketplace disbursements.

According to Aleman, traditional login-based verification works well in consumer onboarding, where one person links one account. But for large players, the scale looks very different. Payroll processors often need to validate 5,000 to 20,000 accounts in a single payout cycle, and some handle well over 100,000.

“Gig platforms and marketplaces may onboard or pay out to hundreds of thousands of workers or sellers each month,” Aleman said. “With Name Match, that workload becomes fully automated. A large payer can submit routing and account numbers plus the expected beneficiary name for an entire batch, and Prometeo orchestrates the ownership evaluation through providers connected to U.S. payment networks, returning an indicative result for each account.”

By layering name-matching onto account-existence checks, Prometeo aims to help firms reduce the risk of sending payments to the wrong recipient, limit manual reviews and avoid costs tied to ACH returns. Fraud concerns continue to rise: 79% of organizations reported attempted payment fraud in 2024, according to industry data cited by the company. ACH payment volumes reached $23.2 trillion in the third quarter, intensifying the need for automated safeguards.

Prometeo first introduced its U.S. Bank Account Verification API in 2024, giving businesses a single integration to validate accounts across both the U.S. and Latin America. The company said its network now covers 100% of U.S. banks and more than 1,200 financial institutions across the Americas.

Aleman says the rise in payment-fraud attempts is accelerating the shift toward verification models that incorporate stronger ownership signals. Organizations want controls that improve accuracy without slowing down their payment or onboarding flows, and they want those controls to work consistently across markets and payment rails.

“Ownership-aware verification is an important part of that evolution,” Aleman said. “As more activity moves to real-time and instant-payment environments, companies will expect verification methods that can generate clearer, more actionable insights. They will also look for ways to complement ownership evaluation with additional capabilities such as risk scoring, behavioral indicators, or real-time alerts based on their own policies and thresholds.”

With Name Match, Prometeo is broadening its infrastructure for ownership-aware payments at a time when enterprises are looking for verification tools that work behind the scenes and support real-time decision making.