Named Account
A named account is a bank account opened in the end customer’s own name rather than in the operator’s name with the customer recorded internally. The customer is the account holder of record, so money arriving there is identified with them at the bank.
Also called: segregated named account · dedicated account
A named account answers one question: who is this money from, or for. Because the customer’s own name sits on the account at the bank, an incoming payment is matched to them by the bank’s records rather than by an operator guessing from a reference field. That is attribution, and it is genuinely useful. It removes mismatched payments, shortens reconciliation, and gives the customer a payment instruction they can hand to a counterparty.
Attribution and custody are two separate questions, and a named account settles only the first. Whose name is on an account is one fact. Whose money the balance legally is, who may move it, and which rules attach conditions to it are different facts, decided by the account agreement, the operator’s permissions and the law that applies. Naming the account leaves all of those exactly where they were.
In practice
A named account solves attribution, not safeguarding. Putting a customer’s name on an account does not by itself segregate the funds, satisfy any safeguarding regime, or decide what happens to the balance if the operator fails. Those depend on how the account is held and which rules apply to it.
Example
A marketplace collects from 400 sellers into one account and matches payments by invoice reference, leaving a few percent unmatched every month. It switches to named accounts, one per seller. The unmatched payments stop, because the bank itself records who each payment was for. Nothing about how the marketplace holds or protects seller balances has changed.
Commonly confused with
| Term | How it differs |
|---|---|
| FBO Account | A named account is in the customer’s name; an FBO account is in the operator’s name and holds many customers’ money for their benefit. |
| Virtual Account | A virtual account is a routing reference pointing at someone else’s account; a named account is an account the customer actually holds at the bank. |
| Segregated Account | Segregation separates the firm’s money from its customers’ money; naming separates one customer from another. |
See also
- FBO AccountAn FBO account is a bank account held in one company’s name for the benefit of its underlying customers. The company controls the account; the money inside belongs to the customers. The bank’s relationship is with the account holder, not with them.
- Virtual AccountA virtual account is an account number, often a virtual IBAN, that routes incoming payments into a single underlying real account while recording which customer or invoice each payment relates to. It identifies money; it does not hold any.
- Segregated AccountA segregated account holds customer money apart from the firm’s own money, so the two are never mixed and the customer balance is identifiable as customer balance in both the firm’s and the bank’s records.
- Safeguarding AccountA safeguarding account is the account at an eligible institution in which a UK payment or e-money firm places the customer funds it must safeguard, held and designated the way the applicable rules require rather than the way a bank chooses to label its product.
- Omnibus AccountAn omnibus account is a single bank account holding the funds of many underlying customers together, with the operator keeping the sub-ledger that records who owns what. The bank deals with one account holder and sees one balance.