Following a public consultation, the European Payments Council (EPC) has officially issued the first version of the Verification of Payee (VOP) scheme rulebook. This rulebook is designed to support payment service providers (PSPs) across the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) in meeting the new regulatory requirements outlined in the EU Instant Payments Regulation (IPR) amending the SEPA Regulation. For the time being, and to allow PSPs in the European Economic Area (EEA) to comply with the new regulatory requirements within the given deadlines, the first VOP rulebook limits 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.

The first VOP scheme enhances payment security by allowing the PSP of the payer (Requesting PSP) to send an instant request to the payee’s PSP (Responding PSP) to verify the payee’s International Bank Account Number (IBAN) against the name of the payee, or against other identifiers like Value-Added Tax (VAT) numbers, Legal Entity Identifiers (LEI) etc.

As part of this process, the Responding PSP instantly checks whether the provided details match its records and replies with a VOP response (e.g., match, no match, close match with the name of the payee, or verification check not possible). The entire process is designed to happen as quickly as possible and in any case to take no more than five seconds, improving payment security and reducing fraud risk for consumers and businesses across Europe.

Other documents

The EPC also published 423 comments from 46 contributors submitted during the public consultation on the proposed VOP scheme rulebook, as well as 116 comments from 30 contributors on the EPC’s recommendations for the matching processes, along with the VOP Task Force's responses. Following this public consultation, the EPC is also publishing the first version of the EPC recommendations for the matching processes under the VOP scheme rulebook.

Also, the VOP Application Programming Interface (API) specifications and the updated API Security Framework document will be released before the end of October 2024. Additionally, the EPC plans to communicate soon additional information about how to achieve reachability and interoperability for VOP scheme at EEA level, including mandatory registration in the EPC Directory Service (EDS) and use of it, and about VOP adherence process. Stay tuned for these important updates!

• The VOP scheme rulebook
• The EPC recommendations for matching processes under the VOP scheme rulebook
• The comments provided during the public consultation and the VOP TF responses