Today, the European Payments Council (EPC) launched a public ‘call for interest’ to identify Directory Service Providers that own directories of BICs, official national identifiers (National IDs) and/or IBAN ranges, and allowing retrieval of BICs from customer account numbers (IBANs). These Directory Service Providers are invited to manifest their interest to collaborate with the EPC with the goal of checking routing algorithms that may be used by Verification of Payee (VOP) scheme participants when issuing VOP Requests.
About the EDS
As part of the VOP scheme, the EPC has developed the EPC Directory Service (EDS), a centralised platform storing all EPC scheme participants’ information needed to securely identify and authorise the scheme participant, and to secure reachability and interoperability at the VOP scheme level.
About the call for interest
Through this call, the EPC seeks to initiate open and transparent collaboration with Directory Service Providers to:
- Verify the availability of the required dataset (Account Holding BICs) to support correct configuration of the EDS in line with EPC specifications.
- Test options for implementing the IBAN-to-BIC mapping algorithm, which is needed by VOP participants and/or RVMs for correctly routing of VOP requests.
How to participate
Directory Service Providers that are interested in participating in this collaboration, are kindly invited to submit their response via email to [email protected] by 18 July 2025, midnight Brussels time.
To submit your response, please complete the response form (EPC194-25). The form, along with additional information about the call, is available here.
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