Monnify Disbursement API Requires destinationAccountName

In Short

• Monnify has made destinationAccountName mandatory for disbursement requests.
• Requests that omit the field will be rejected with a 400 Bad Request error.
• The change supports CBN compliance and aims to reduce failed bank transfers.

What Happened

Monnify has updated its disbursement API rules. Disbursement is the payout side of payments, when a business sends money to a bank account.

The key change is that destinationAccountName is no longer optional. It is now required in the request body for transfers, including single transfers and bulk transfers. If your integration does not send a valid destination account name, Monnify says the request will return a 400 Bad Request.

This update lands as more developers move to Monnify API v2. Monnify deprecated API v1 on May 1, 2026, and users who have not migrated need to move to v2 to keep transfers working.

For teams, this means reviewing any payout flows that only send account number and bank code, then adding the account name string as well. In practice, it is the name tied to the beneficiary bank account, like “Amina Yusuf” or a registered business name.

Why It Matters

First, it is a compliance shift. Monnify points to Central Bank of Nigeria guidelines that require name verification as part of transfer processing, mainly to reduce fraud and misdirected payouts.

Second, it affects reliability. Adding the account name allows a name-match check before money moves. Name matching is a simple validation step that checks whether the provided name aligns with what the bank has on record. If it does not match, the transfer can be flagged or fail early, instead of failing after processing.

For Nigerian fintechs, marketplaces, and payroll operators running payouts at scale, this is a breaking change if the field is missing. The fastest fix is to update your v2 disbursement payloads and test for 400 responses, then roll out the change across all services that initiate transfers.