Insight

22 July 25

Albania and SEPA: advancing payment integration

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and should not be attributed to the European Payments Council.We spoke with Gent Sejko, Governor of the Bank of Albania (BoA), about Albania’s journey toward Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) membership, the digital transformatio

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As a PSP, I received an email with my access to the EPC Directory Service (EDS) platform, but I am planning to use a RVM which will manage my data the EDS registration and update on my behalf. What should I do?

A PSP that is planning to use an RVM in the future and to rely on this RVM for EDS registration and update can ignore the email received with its access to the EDS for the time being.

How should the VOP be done when a factoring or collection on behalf company is used?

The VOP process presents a challenge for certain factoring solutions, specifically those involving "half-disclosed factoring”, since in these cases, the payer is unaware of the factoring process and only receives an invoice from

Should the RVM (on behalf of the requesting or responding PSP) validate the timestamp? In cases when the maximum execution time is exceeded, the RVM could/should cut the connection and return an error to the requesting PSP?

From a practical point of view, the counter starts when the VOP request is initiated by the requester and materialized via the VOP request Timestamp (attribute AT-T056).  It is then up to each scheme participant to agree wi

When more than one URI is indicated by a VOP participant in the EDS, which URI should be used by the Requesting PSP? Which policy should be used to select the URI?

Is it possible to set the Operational Readiness Date (ORD) in the EDS to a time before the VOP Rulebook comes into force (5 October) for testing purposes?

Consistently with the Rulebook, the ORD as set in the EDS and ROP may not be set at any date earlier than 5 October 2025 (the effective date of the VOP scheme).

Can a VOP scheme participant provide an RVM address in the major incident reporting contact email address requested in the Schedule Information to the Adherence Agreement(Annex H2)

Yes, a VOP scheme participant can provide an email address of its RVM in the major incident reporting contact email address.