EU Verification of Payee (VoP)

Note: Information on this page is draft, changes are not expected but possible before finalisation

Verification of Payee is a Europe wide account name checking service designed by the European Payments Council (EPC) and intended to go live on 5th October ahead of the requirement for PSPs to provide a service under the EU Instant Payments Regulation (IPR) in line with deadlines

Euro-area PSPs	Non-euro area PSPs
Euro-area PSPs must provide a beneficiary-verification service where they are the payer’s PSP by 9th October 2025	PSPs located in a Member State whose currency is not the euro by 9th July 2027

The service is similar in concept to the UK Confirmation of Payee (CoP) scheme, but has a smaller set of possible results (Match, No Match, Close Match, Unable to Check). A key difference to CoP is that the EPC/IPR expects a VoP check to be made before every payment.

Note on coverage: It is highly likely that not all Euro area European PSPs will have services available on the 9th October date, and will phase in services across the period following; if a check is made against a PSPs in SEPA area that does not support an 'unable to check' message will be returned. This should not be interpreted to prevent execution of the payment in normal circumstances.

VoP Respond (Modulr response to incoming VoP requests from other PSPs)

Modulr will enable Verification of Payee checks by other PSPs on or ahead of the Euro-area deadline. This will be for any € denominated account on it's European and UK branch BICs. No action is required from a Modulr partner or client to enable; all accounts will be included as there is no 'opt-out' in VoP.

VoP Request (Modulr sending VoP requests to other PSPs)

A new API endpoint will be made available in Q3 in line with the industry timeline that enables a Partner or Client to perform a check on a beneficiary ahead of making payment. This endpoint is independent of the /sendpayment endpoint to avoid creating breaking changes in existing logic for SEPA and other payments

Endpoint URL will be api.modulrfinance.com/verification-of-payee-service/verify-payee

{
  "name": "<name>",
  "IBAN": "<IBAN>",
  "paymentAccountId": "<accountId>",
}

Where name is the payer name (up to 140 characters & can include diacritics as appropriate) and IBAN is the International Bank Account Number to be confirmed as associated. It is not necessary to provide a BIC; this will be looked up by the Modulr service. paymentAccountId is the account ID on the Modulr platform the subsequent payment will be made from; if the payment is not to be made on a Modulr account omit this field.

{
  "id":"VOP0000001",
  "result": { 
    "code": "CLOSE_MATCH",
    "matchedName": "Thierry Henry"
    } 
}

id - The id of the verify payee request

result - The result of the verify payee check. Will be one of MATCH NO_MATCH CLOSE_MATCH CHECK_NOT_POSSIBLE

matchedName - only returned on a CLOSE_MATCH response, the actual name of the Account Holder as returned by the responding PSP

[
  {
    "field": "string",
    "code": "string",
    "message": "string",
    "sourceService": "string",
    "errorCode": "string"
  }
]

errroCode and message will contain details of the error from the VoP responding PSP

VoP sandbox service

To assist Partners and Clients in integrating changes to payment flows, a Modulr sandbox service is expected to be made available in early Q3 2025 available ahead of the industry launch. This information will be updated as dates are refined.