The European Payments Council (EPC) announces today the launch of a formal qualification process for organisations intending to offer services as Routing and/or Verification Mechanisms (RVM) in the EPC Verification Of Payee (VOP) Scheme.
The VOP scheme, developed by the EPC, will come into effect on 5 October 2025. It aims to help Payment Service Providers (PSPs) in the European Union (EU) and European Economic Area (EEA) meet new regulatory requirements for payee verification. These regulatory requirements mandate that all PSPs in the EU/EEA implement a mechanism to verify the payee (i.e., beneficiary) of an (instant) credit transfer.
RVMs will play a key role to ensure interoperability, as the EPC expects that a large part of VOP scheme participant PSPs will rely on the services of one or more RVMs to comply with this regulation. Organisations that already expressed their intent to offer their services as VOP RVM can be consulted on the EPC website here.
By launching a mandatory qualification process for RVMs, the EPC aims to ensure a successful roll-out of the VOP scheme. This process includes a self-certification of the RVM’s VOP APIs against the new EPC API Reference Toolbox test platform.
The process is open to organisations that already expressed their interest in offering services as a VOP scheme-compliant to the EPC (these organisations can be consulted on the EPC website) as well as to organisations that apply for the first time.
How to participate
The EPC requires all organisations interested in offering their services as RVM in the VOP Scheme, to submit the EPC RVM Agreement to the EPC to start the EPC RVM qualification process and are kindly invited to complete and submit this form via email to [email protected].
Please note the EPC strongly recommends organisations that intend to offer their services as of the time of go-live of the VOP Scheme on 5 October 2025 to submit this form by 30 April 2025, midnight Brussels time to guarantee a timely completion of the qualification process.
The EPC RVM Agreement document can be found here.
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