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Verification of Payee delivers its first report card; updated rules take effect on 20 September 2026

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Author: SEPA.tr — Editorial

Data period: October 2025 – early 2026 · Confidence level: A (EPC documents) / B (industry analyses)

The first field results of Verification of Payee (VoP), mandatory in Europe since 9 October 2025, are becoming clear; the EPC has also updated the rule set.

The first report card: what do the numbers say?

According to Natixis CIB’s analysis based on data from the French infrastructure STET (180 million transactions, December 2025 – January 2026):

  • 66% exact match (the entered name matched the account holder exactly)
  • 13% partial match (a “did you mean?” correction)
  • 19% no match, ~2% no response

According to the analysis, VoP’s effect on transfer volumes was “relatively neutral”; problem areas are corporate bulk payments, differences in legal/trade names, and data inconsistencies between banks. This is an industry analysis, not an official scheme-wide statistic.

What changes on 20 September 2026?

According to the EPC’s announcement, three updates take effect on 20 September 2026:

  1. VoP Scheme Rulebook v1.1 (EPC218-23) — the outcome of the urgent change consultation of December 2025,
  2. VoP Inter-PSP API specifications v1.1.1 (EPC103-24),
  3. API Security Framework v2.1 (EPC164-22) — mandatory for VoP, SEPA Request-to-Pay and SPAA participants using APIs.

What it means in practice

  • Even if the IBAN is correct, a payee name mismatch now produces a warning before the transfer; ignoring the warning can shift liability to the sender. Details: Payee name–IBAN mismatch.
  • Entering the recipient’s name in its official form as registered at the bank (no abbreviations, including legal suffixes) reduces the risk of a no-match.
  • You can try how VoP works with our VoP simulator.

Related content

IBAN validation and account ownership · SEPA R-transactions · How to reverse a wrong SEPA transfer

Sources

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