BankLint

Guides · By Tan Gravam · Updated 2026-10-20

Verification of Payee and bulk payment files

Since 9 October 2025, payment service providers in euro-area member states must offer Verification of Payee (VoP): before a credit transfer is authorised, the payer’s bank checks the payee name against the account and reports a match, a close match, no match or that the check was not possible. Member states outside the euro area follow from 9 July 2027. Companies that submit several payment orders as a package, such as a pain.001 file, may opt out (Regulation (EU) 2024/886, Article 5c).

What Verification of Payee is

Regulation (EU) 2024/886, the Instant Payments Regulation, added Article 5c to the SEPA Regulation (EU) No 260/2012. It requires payment service providers to offer the payer a check that the payee’s name matches the payee’s account (IBAN) before the payer authorises a credit transfer. It applies to standard and instant credit transfers, and the service is free of charge for the payer.

Member statesVerification of Payee from
Euro area9 October 2025
Outside the euro area9 July 2027

The results

The result is given before the payment is authorised. ISO 20022 has transaction status codes for these outcomes, such as RCVC (no mismatching data), RVMC (data matching closely), RVNM (mismatching data) and RVNA (data not applicable). Whether your bank reports them in a status report (pain.002) or another way is described in its file specification.

  • Match: the name and the account belong together.
  • Close match: the name is almost right; the bank shows the name it holds for the account.
  • No match: the name does not belong to the account.
  • Check not possible: the check could not be carried out.

Bulk files and the opt-out

Payment service users that are not consumers may opt out of Verification of Payee when they submit several payment orders as a package. A pain.001 with several payments is such a package. A single payment, and any payment by a consumer, is always checked.

How you opt in or out, and how results and approvals work for files, is defined by each bank. Agree it during onboarding: whether your files are checked, who reviews a close match or no match, and how rejected or held payments come back to your ERP. See also testing payment files before going live with a bank.

Name data quality before upload

With Verification of Payee, the creditor name in the file is compared with the name the payee’s bank holds. Names shortened to fit, converted characters (ü written as u) or a trading name instead of the account holder’s name can turn a match into a close match or no match.

BankLint checks that the names are present, at most 70 characters long and in a character set your bank supports. It does not check that a name belongs to an account: only the payee’s bank can.

  • SEPA-SCT-NAME-005BLOCKERCreditor name is missing. SEPA makes the creditor and the creditor name mandatory (both are optional in ISO 20022).
  • SEPA-SCT-NAME-003BLOCKERCreditor-side name longer than 70 characters. SEPA limits the creditor name, the ultimate debtor name given at transaction level and the ultimate creditor name to 70 characters (ISO 20022 allows 140).
  • SEPA-SCT-CHARSET-002INFOCharacters outside the SEPA basic Latin set. A name, the creditor's address or the remittance text of a transaction uses Latin letters outside the basic set (such as ü, é, ß or ș, also written with combining accents), typographic punctuation (such as ’ or –) or symbols (such as &, €, °, ™ or №). The guidelines let customers use the character set in use at national level, while PSPs only have to support the basic set.

Questions

Does Verification of Payee apply to bulk pain.001 files?

Yes, unless the company has opted out for payments submitted as a package. Only payment service users that are not consumers can opt out, and only for several payment orders submitted together.

When does Verification of Payee start outside the euro area?

Payment service providers in EU member states whose currency is not the euro must offer it from 9 July 2027. In the euro area it applies since 9 October 2025.

Does BankLint perform Verification of Payee?

No. Verification of Payee is a check between the payer’s and the payee’s bank. BankLint checks the file before the upload: names present, at most 70 characters, supported characters.

Sources: EPC132-08 2025 Version 1.0 (European Payments Council) and the ISO 20022 message schemas, Regulation (EU) 2024/886, ECB on the Instant Payments Regulation, ISO 20022 External Code Sets. All sources and dates: Standards and sources.

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