Verification of Payee: what the EU name check means for business payments

The short answer

Verification of Payee (VoP) is a name check on euro transfers. Since 9 October 2025, payment providers in the euro area have had to compare the name you type with the name their counterpart holds for the IBAN, and show you the result before you authorize the payment. It's free, it covers standard and instant transfers, and providers in EU countries outside the euro area must offer it from 9 July 2027.

For a business, VoP changes two things. When you pay, a close match or no match is a warning to act on, because once you go ahead, a misdirected payment is your loss. When you get paid, payers see whether your name matches, so the name on your invoices must be your company's legal name as your bank holds it.

How the check works

The payer enters the payee's IBAN and name. The payer's provider sends them to the payee's provider, which compares the name with its records and replies in seconds. Under the European Payments Council's scheme rulebook, the payer gets one of four results:

The payer can authorize the payment after any of these results. The rulebook also lets a payer check a company by an identification code, such as a VAT number or an LEI, instead of its name, where both providers support that code.

Which payments are checked

• Euro credit transfers, standard and instant, between payment accounts at providers taking part in the scheme.
• Online, in the app and in branch. BaFin, Germany's financial regulator, says paper transfer orders are checked when the customer hands them in at a branch.
• New and changed standing orders. Existing standing orders carry on unchecked, according to BaFin.
• Not direct debits, not savings or loan accounts, and not payments in other currencies or sent by SWIFT from outside the scheme.

By April 2026, 2,768 payment providers had joined the scheme, according to an EPC presentation published by the European Central Bank.

What changes when you pay

Single payments are always checked. A company can opt out only for payment orders submitted as a package, such as a supplier or payroll batch, and can opt back in at any time. Providers handle this differently: Convera, for example, opts all its corporate customers out for batch payments by default. If your batches go to new or changed beneficiaries, consider opting back in.

After a warning, the loss is yours. BaFin's summary of the rules: if your provider ran the check and you paid anyway, it isn't liable for a payment that reaches the wrong account. If it didn't run the check and that led to a wrong payment, it must refund you.

Treat a no match on a regular supplier as a red flag. Invoice redirection fraud works by changing a supplier's bank details, and a name that no longer matches is often the first sign. Call the supplier on a number you already hold, not one in the email or invoice. The guide to supplier bank detail changes sets out a full process.

Check new IBANs before the first payment. The IBAN checker shows the country, bank and BIC behind an IBAN, so you can see whether a supplier's new account is in the country and bank you expect. It checks the format, not the name: VoP does that.

What changes when you get paid

Payers now see whether the name they typed matches your account. A close match or no match doesn't stop the payment, but it can make a customer hesitate, call you, or pay late.

• Give your legal name exactly. Use the name your bank holds for the account, including the legal form, such as "GmbH" or "Ltd". A trading name or brand is the usual cause of a close match.
• Put it on every invoice and payment request, next to the IBAN, so the payer copies both from the same place.
• Tell customers when your details change, and expect them to call you to confirm, which is what they should do.
• Check what your account shows. A pooled IBAN can return another company's name, so payers get a close match or no match every time. A named IBAN in your company's name avoids this; see named vs pooled virtual IBANs.

What the first year showed

Data from the European Payments Council, as reported by Qombo in October 2026, put the volume at about 2.2 billion checks in the second quarter of 2026, with 95% of responses arriving in under a second. Of the checks:

• 66.2% returned a match
• 16.2% returned a close match
• 15.4% returned no match
• 1.4% couldn't be completed, and 0.8% were invalid requests

So roughly one check in three shows the payer something other than a clean match. Version 1.1 of the scheme rulebook took effect on 20 September 2026, and the EPC plans to publish version 2.0, which includes a proposed process for inquiries and compensation between providers, by the end of November 2026.

Verification of Payee and the UK's Confirmation of Payee

For sterling payments, see UK payment rails for businesses, which covers Confirmation of Payee in detail.

How this works with Align

Align gives companies based outside the EU a named EUR IBAN in the company's own name, for receiving and sending euros over SEPA and SEPA Instant. Because the account is in your name, payers who check it see your company. Give them your legal name exactly as registered. Euros you receive land in your balance as USDC or USDT, and payments to suppliers go out from the same named account. Align is registered with FINTRAC in Canada as a money services business and isn't authorized under MiCA.

Sources

• European Central Bank, Instant Payments Regulation (accessed November 2026)
• Regulation (EU) 2024/886, the Instant Payments Regulation (March 2024)
• European Payments Council, Verification of Payee scheme rulebook, version 1.1 (March 2026, effective 20 September 2026)
• European Payments Council, Status update on payment and payment-related schemes (June 2026)
• European Payments Council, Update on payment schemes and VOP deployment (May 2026)
• BaFin, Verification of payee (accessed November 2026)
• Convera, Can I opt out of Verification of Payee? (accessed November 2026)
• Pay.UK, Confirmation of Payee (accessed November 2026)
• Qombo, Verification of Payee, one year later (updated 12 October 2026)

This guide is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Rules and providers' terms change; check the sources linked above and take advice on your own situation.