Verification of Payee becomes mandatory:  New regulatory rules in EU payments

As the fight against payments fraud continues, new mandatory Verification of Payee (VoP) requirements have been introduced across the EU. Are you ready? 

• Mandatory verification is here: From October 2025, Eurozone PSPs must confirm the payee’s name and account number before executing SEPA credit transfers.
• Trust through data: VoP strengthens consumer protection by ensuring accurate, verified payment data and harmonising fraud prevention across the EU.
• Why it matters: Compliance is just the start—VoP promotes shared responsibility, enabling data-driven fraud prevention and building trust in instant payments. 

The EU’s new mandatory VoP requirements came into effect in October 2025, introducing stricter requirements around payee data verification.

This development comes at a critical time in the payments space: global fraud is surging, there is increased international focus on data-driven fraud prevention, and there is a growing appreciation of the importance of trust in the instant payments space.

All Eurozone Payments Service Providers (PSPs) must comply with the new rules, but the changes have implications across the payment’s ecosystem. For example, corporate users will need to adjust their processes to respond to incoming VoP results, which directly impact decisions on whether transactions can go ahead [Note1].

Dal Sahota, Global Head of Trusted Payments, LSEG comments, “As fraud and financial crime statistics continue to surge across the globe, trust is becoming ever-more important. The new VoP requirements will help to build this trust in the payments ecosystem by promoting shared ownership of the responsibility to protect all stakeholders.”

Our latest white paper unpacks the phenomenon of surging fraud, drilling down into the nature of authorised push payment (APP) scams in particular. This type of fraud is highly challenging, because it relies on trickery to confuse victims into authorising payments themselves. The paper goes on to look at broader cross-border payment and related risk, cautioning that faster payment systems are leaving little time for banks to identify fraudulent transactions.

Across the globe, consumers increasingly expect faster, more seamless payment experiences. In particular, the surging popularity of instant payments offers businesses and their customers an unprecedented level of speed and convenience.   

At the same time, however, instant payments bring risk – not just relating to APP fraud, as outlined above, but also risk relating to account takeovers, synthetic identity fraud, deepfakes and much more.

Let’s take a quick snapshot of VoP, which has been introduced to fight back against APP fraud, misdirected payments and impersonation scams by confirming that the payee’s name matches the account details held at the receiving bank.

Some important details include:

• As of October 2025, VoP is mandatory for all PSPs operating in the Eurozone.  This will extend to non-Euro Area PSPs by July 2027, as part of the broader Instant Payments Regulation rollout.
• All PSPs must now verify both the name and the account number of a payee before executing regular or instant Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) credit transfers.
• VoP facilitates the verification of data about a payee, but it cannot be used to reliably identify a private or legal person[Note3]. 

Sahota explains, that “VoP harmonises consumer protection and fraud prevention across the EU, creating a region-wide Confirmation of Payee (CoP) standard similar to the UK’s." It is important for strengthening trust in instant payments, and has been described by the European Payments Council (EPC) as a “major milestone[Note 4].”

At the same time, however, the new rules increase regulatory obligations and raise the bar on responsibility for ensuring data accuracy and implementing secure verification workflows. 

Failure to comply could have far-reaching consequences, including greater exposure to fraud, increased operational risk and non-compliance penalties. More than this, it could undermine trust, the key ingredient that is so necessary in today’s instant payments ecosystem.