The European Payments Council (EPC) has announced that its Verification of Payee (VOP) scheme rulebook has been enforced as of 5 October 2025.
With this move, the EPC aims to solidify payment security and support payment service providers (PSPs) in meeting the new demands under the EU Instant Payments Regulation (IPR), amending the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) Regulation, which is set to come into effect on 9 October 2025 for Eurozone providers.
Scaling security for electronic payments
VOP represents a new EPC scheme focused on minimising fraud and scaling security of Account-to-Account (A2A) electronic payments. Following a public consultation on the EPC’s draft rulebook and the recommendations for the matching process, the introduction of the VOP intends to fulfil IPR legislative obligations and assist in the verification of payee for SCT and SCT Inst transactions. According to the EPC, upcoming versions of VOP may extend to other payment instruments and use cases, based on updated regulatory requirements, market demands, and stakeholders’ interests.
Furthermore, the introduction of the VOP scheme rulebook represents a significant milestone and the result of a collaborative effort by the European community of PSPs. The move comes as the EPC’s first large-scale, API-based scheme in Europe, and the first time an EPC scheme has expanded to a large number of participants within 12 months of the rulebook’s publication, and six months since the start of the adherence process.
At the time of writing, the EPC register of participants included 2,673 PSPs and 55 Routing and/or Verification Mechanisms (RVMs) prepared for VOP operations. The EPC expects that participation will go beyond 3,000 PSPs by July 2027, when the IPR obligations are set to be extended to non-Euro Area PSPs. Additionally, to operationally support the scheme, the EPC introduced on 2 September 2025 the EPC Directory Service (EDS), offering PSPs and RVMs a tool to assist with reachability and interoperability of the VOP scheme. Before this, the regulator launched an automated certification process based on the API reference Toolbox (ART) platform, which was made available to RVMs and PSPs in May 2025.
Moving forward, the EPC mentioned that the VOP scheme is set to follow the same transparent change management cycle as other schemes. Also, the regulator invites stakeholders to submit modification requests in response to a new public consultation.
