Ask HN: Is there a register which company uses which bank?

5 points by Tschayba 3 years ago | 5 comments

In my country every company must declare on their website the bank account number. At least one number. I'm not sure what if they have more accounts in different banks.

I wonder is there already a service out there that provides the data on account numbers and banks that companies use?

Such list could be useful in preventing scams. Let's say that before making a payment to a company you would see it the associated number is really connected to that company or if some has breached your system and changed the account number. It could also help with fake invoices and so on.

Can such system even be built or is this not possible due to contracts beetween banks and clients?

geoah 3 years ago |

This could also make it easier for scammers as it will be trivial to send phishing attempts tailored to each company without much effort.

Tschayba 3 years ago | |

Yeah, it is double edge sword. I wonder what could be done to prevent payments from going to fraudulent account.

TechBro8615 3 years ago |

No, but in the US you can get partial coverage by looking at PPP data (covid "loans"), which will show the bank where a PPP loan was deposited for a company that received one. Obviously this doesn't include all companies or all bank accounts of each company, and the data is limited to a snapshot of 2020.

ThePhysicist 3 years ago |

Kind of. Credit rating agencies in most countries effectively have this data (or can get it, at least), but they won't release it to the public. That said many companies that receive money via bank transfer seem to post their bank account details on their websites.

gidorah 3 years ago |

In the UK, we have bank name verification. If the name youbtype doesn't match thr name on the account, you have to accept the risk it might not be the company you think it is.