Following a public consultation on the urgent change requests to the Verification Of Payee (VOP) scheme rulebook identified by Verification Of Payee Working Group (VOP WG), the EPC is launching the version 1.1 of the VOP scheme rulebook (and related documents), developed to support payment service providers (PSPs) in the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) that will be required to comply with legal obligations on the verification of a payee in the case of credit transfers as outlined in the proposed EU Instant Payments Regulation (IPR) amending the SEPA Regulation.
The version 1.0 of the VOP scheme rulebook which entered into force on 5 October 2025 focused to predominantly fulfil the EU legislative requirements set out by the IPR. This means that to allow PSPs in the European Economic Area (EEA) to comply with the new regulatory requirements within the given deadlines, the rulebook limited itself to verifications of a payee related to a SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT) or a SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst). Future versions of the VOP scheme rulebook could cover other payment instruments as well, depending on market needs or interest.
After the launch of the VOP scheme, the VOP WG identified some urgent change requests needed either to solve issues that arose from the deployment of the VOP service, or to clarify some parts of the VOP scheme rulebook, the API specifications and the API Security Framework (ASF).
This version 1.1 of the VOP scheme rulebook includes these urgent changes and clarifications, and will become effective on 20 September 2026.
The VOP scheme allows the PSP of the payer (the Requesting PSP) to instantly send to the PSP of the payee (the Responding PSP), a request to verify the International Bank Account Number (IBAN) and the name of the payee as given by the payer (the Requester), or potentially, an identification code which unambiguously identifies that payee (e.g., Value-Added Tax (VAT) number, an Legal Entity Identifier (LEI)). The reason for this request is that the payer intends to initiate an SCT or an SCT Inst transaction to the payee.
The Responding PSP instantly verifies whether the received data matches with the concerned data registered for that payee at the Responding PSP. The Responding PSP immediately provides the Requesting PSP with a VOP response (e.g., match, no match, close match with the name of the payee, or verification check not possible). The Requesting PSP immediately passes on the response to the payer.