Pan-European verification of payee ready by December

EBA CLEARING announced today that it will provide its service users with Verification of Payee at a pan-European level as from December 2024. The roll-out of Verification of Payee is one element in the comprehensive preparation programme that the Company is engaging in with its user community to take instant payments to the next level.

With the delivery of Verification of Payee, the Company will support payment service providers (PSPs) in offering IBAN/name matching services to their customers for their SEPA transactions. EBA CLEARING’s Verification of Payee will be aligned with the respective scheme of the European Payments Council. PSPs across the Single Euro Payments Area will have to offer such services to payers from 9 October 2025 on, as mandated by the Instant Payments Regulation, which came into effect today.  

“EBA CLEARING has a proven track record in delivering infrastructure that supports PSPs in complying with European payments regulation in a timely, cost-effective and reliable manner. With Verification of Payee, we are adding another element to our SEPA services that will help our users get ready to meet the requirements of the Instant Payments Regulation. We will offer different options on the sending and receiving side to ensure solid reach for Verification of Payee from day one while allowing users to move towards regulatory compliance at their own pace,” said Erwin Kulk, Head of Service Development and Management at EBA CLEARING.

“But fighting fraud is about much more than regulatory compliance. To avoid that more instant payments lead to more instant fraud, there must be a strong focus on improving the fraud-fighting capabilities of the SEPA ecosystem. With Fraud Pattern and Anomaly Detection (FPAD), which leverages the network view and has been developed together with our user community, our participants will be able to complement Verification of Payee with other powerful fraud risk indicators.”

Aside from further strengthening the safety of instant payments, EBA CLEARING is also ready for the additional participation and volume growth that RT1 may see as a result of the Instant Payments Regulation. In cooperation with its users, the Company has started the necessary preparations to ensure that the collective effort required for this ramp-up will be seamlessly completed.

“Building on the experience of the successful SEPA migration in 2014, PSPs across Europe will only succeed in smoothly scaling up their instant payment capabilities if we prepare as a community, together with all stakeholders,” said Eva Herskovicova, Head of Operations at EBA CLEARING.

“We are closely monitoring participants’ and system performance and are very confident that our joint ramp-up preparations will result in a disruption-free migration period, which will benefit our users, their customers and the wider ecosystem. Our colleagues also stand ready to assist new RT1 joiners with their onboarding.”

RT1 is a pan-European infrastructure for instant payments in euro, owned and operated by EBA CLEARING. Launched in 2017, the system currently settles around three million payments per day – in real-time and with immediate finality, in roughly one second, across all corners of Europe. RT1 reaches all PSPs adhering to the EPC’s SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst) Scheme and offers a variety of options allowing EPC SCT Inst Scheme adherents to access the system in the way that best suits their needs.