SEPA transfers with verification of payee (VOP)

As of October 2025, payment service providers based in a SEPA country with euro currency will be subject to a legal obligation. For SEPA transfers and SEPA instant transfers, it must be verified that the name of the payee matches the specified IBAN, which is known as Verification of Payee or VOP for short. This shall reduce errors and prevent payment fraud. The verification of payee (VOP) is based on the data held by the bank of the payee.

VOP in the EBICS procedure

The verification of payee (VOP) is coordinated by the EBICS bank server and carried out by the bank of the payee or its service provider. In BL Banking, you initiate the verification of payees. Based on the results, you decide whether to finally approve the payments. If necessary, correct the names of the SEPA payees based on the verification results. The result even provides the correct name as a specific proposal for correction, if the deviation was minor. Corporate customers can choose whether or not a verification of payee shall be carried for bulk payments. For single payments, the verification of payee is generally mandatory. A submission with verification is also called opt-in, without verification opt-out. The EDS process starts for orders with verification of payee after receiving the VOP verification result, without verification it starts when submitting the order to the bank. For orders with verification of payee, an additional signature is therefore required.

VOP verification results

In addition to Full match (RCVC) and No match (RVNM) between name and IBAN, there is a third status: Close Match (RVMC). In this case, the verification returns the name held by the bank. If verification is not possible for technical or other reasons (RVNA) or if the result is still pending (PDNG), this is also returned as the result.

The difference between no match and close match is determined individually by banks or their payment service providers based on the recommendations of the European Payments Council (EPC). In general, minor spelling variations or typos are considered close matches. An abbreviated part of a name can already be considered a no match.

Summary

The verification of payee:

• applies to SEPA transfers and instant transfers
• is information provided by the bank of the payee
• is optional for bulk orders, mandatory for individual payments
• precedes the EDS
• verifies the name against the IBAN (not vice versa)
• returns the correct name if there is minimal deviation

Order types

New order types have been introduced in order to integrate the verification of payee into the EBICS procedure and display the results. In a BTF, the Service Option element determines whether the order is executed with or without the verification of payee (VOI or VOO). The EBICS bank server must provide banks and subscribers with the required order types.

SEPA transfer

• CTV or SCT::VOI_pain.001 – with VOP (opt-in)
• CCT or SCT::VOO_pain.001 – without VOP (opt-out)

SEPA instant transfer

• CIV or SCI::VOI_pain.001 – with VOP (opt-in)
• CIP or SCI::VOO_pain.001 – without VOP (opt-out)

VOP Status report (result notification)

• VPZ or REP:DE:VOP_pain.002_ZIP – with VOP (opt-in)
• not available – without VOP (opt-out)

Usually, you do not need to prepare anything for verification of payee in the application. You can process payments and send files directly. If necessary, you can change bank settings and personal user preferences. In any case, it is advisable to review stored recipient data in advance and correct it if necessary based on information provided by the recipient or other official sources. Recipient names shall always be entered unchanged.

SEPA transfer / SEPA instant transfer with verification of payee

Recording payments with and without verification of payee is the same. Simply select SEPA transfer or SEPA instant transfer without further classification and enter the required data.

Signing with or without verification of payee

You can decide whether to request a new verification of payee on the page Open payments/Sign order page by selecting the checkbox Verification of payee (VOP), which is preselected according to your personal user settings.

Without verification of payee – Remove the check mark from the box Verify payees (VOP). Click on the button Sign and approve the order for execution with your bank-specific signature.

With verification of payee – Click on the button Submit. Your password is required for the transport signature, not for approval.

You can send orders with and without verification of payee to the bank together. However, your signature will be evaluated differently, on the one hand as a bank-specific approval and on the other hand as a transport signature. The payment type on the accompanying ticket is displayed accordingly as CTV or CIV (or SCT::VOI_pain.001 or SCI::VOI_pain.001). Select the desired setting for each order. For a single payment, you cannot disable verification of payee if verification of payee is enforced according to the bank settings.

Figure: Order before submission for verification of payee(detail)

If there are already VOP results from previous orders for saved recipients in an open payment, the column Recipient is highlighted with a color in the payment overview. No VOP result is displayed if the recipient was entered manually in previous orders and not saved.

• Green for full match (RCVC)
• Yellow for close match (RVMC)
• Red for no match (RVNM)
• Blue for non-verifiability (RVNA)

A tooltip displays the meaning of the respective check result, the recipient's IBAN, and the date of the last verification. Even payees who have not been verified have a corresponding tooltip. In the case of a close match (yellow), the name reported back by the payee's bank is also displayed. Please note that payees and banks are linked to a tenant. Verification results are only displayed if they originate from the same tenant as the payee and bank in the current payment.

If you want to change a payee before submitting, cancel the signature process, edit the respective open payment, and then sign. No preliminary result will then be displayed in the payment table.

Figure: Previously verified recipients in the payment overview (detail)

The dialog box Sign order summarizes once again how many orders are being signed in total and how many of these will be submitted to the bank with and without verification by the payee. This allows you to see exactly whether and how many orders need to be approved for execution in the EDS.

Bank-specific signature in the EDS

Payment orders without a payee verification have already been approved bank-specifically with your first signature. Orders that you have submitted for the verification of the payees must be approved bank-specifically under Orders – EDS overview once the verification results have been received. Update the EDS overview to retrieve the VOP results. This may be necessary several times if the external processing of the verification of payees is delayed. Select one or more orders and click on the Sign button. The accompanying ticket on the page Sign EDS order contains a summary of the VOP results without mentioning names. The payment overview highlights the verified recipients with the above-mentioned signal colors. A tooltip shows the meaning in words.

For payees with close matches (RVMC, highlighted in yellow), the tooltip also contains the correct name and the button Apply names from VOP result is available on the page. This allows you to exit the EDS and open a comparison in which you can transfer all or selected suggestions for correction returned by the respective payees's bank to your stored recipient data. It is not possible to transfer the names to the EDS because the order has already been presented to the bank.

You can still approve an order with one or more negatively verified payees bank-specifically. However, it is advisable to correct the order in this case.

Correct an order with incorrect payees

To correct the payees, the entire order must be canceled. It is not possible to cancel parts of an order, even if you only need to correct one payee out of several.

1. Open the EDS overview under Orders. Select the order to be corrected. A multiple selection is also possible.
2. Select More actions – Import as open payments to create open payments from the current order.
3. Click on Cancel in the EDS overview and confirm with your password.
4. Select Payments – Open payments. Open the imported payment with the incorrect payee. Click Edit and change the field Recipient. Enable the checkbox Save recipient to save the payee for reuse. Repeat this process for all affected payments.
5. Resubmit the order to the bank. The verification of the payee should now return a positive VOP result.

Send file to bank

SEPA transfers or instant transfers that you receive as a file from an external source can also be sent to the bank with or without verification of the payee. As with payments, files sent with payee verification must be approved bank-specifically in the EDS overview. Please note the following on the page Send file to bank:

• The easiest way is to select the file format Send payment file in SEPA format. Regardless of the original format of the file, use the checkbox Verify payees (VOP) on the page Sign order to determine, as with open payments, whether the order is to be submitted for payee verification or signed directly bank-specifically. The payment type changes accordingly.

• If you select the file format free file transfer, you must specify the order type or BTF. This may or may not correspond to the file, because even in this case, the checkbox Verify payees (VOP) determines the actual order type.

• When signing in the EDS, the payment overview shows VOP results from previous orders only for payees that are stored in recipient management.

If you want to correct recipients from a sent file due to a negative VOP result, you can proceed as described above in section Correct an order with incorrect payees. Alternatively, the order can be corrected in the source system. In the EBICS client, the old order must then be canceled and the new file sent.

Notifications

Banks provide VOP notifications for retrieval which contain the results of the verification of payee per order. These are generated for documentation and correction purposes. You can view a VOP notification under Orders – Notifications by clicking on a line with the type Result of recipient verification (VOP). On the page of the same name, you can print the notification as a PDF file. As with the bank-specific signature, you can use the button Apply names from VOP result to transfer the reported names to saved recipients in case the verification result was a close match (RVMC).

Depending on the configuration of the bank server, VOP notifications contain all payees or only those with incorrect names. In the latter case, the page Verification of Payee (VOP) will be blank if all payees contained were correct. The PDF file will then also not contain a list of names, but only the number of payees reported as correct. If necessary, you can make the PDF files available to other systems for correction purposes if they deliver data but do not receive any results from verification of payee themselves.

If you do not require VOP notifications, you can disable the retrieval in the bank details, see Bank details – Notifications (tab).

Figure: Notification on the result of the verification of payee (VOP)

Stored recipients

VOP results are also available for stored SEPA recipients. Open the menu item Payments – Recipients and sort by the Payment type column. If there is already a VOP result for recipients with the entry SEPA transfer, the result of the last VOP verification is highlighted in color.

• Green – Full match (RCVC): The name corresponds exactly to the IBAN account holder at the recipient bank. You do not need to make any changes.

• Yellow – Close match (RVMC): The name differs slightly. The VOP result contains the correct recipient name as a correction proposal.

• Red – No match (RVNM): The payee is incorrect. There is no suggested correction. The name must be corrected manually, e.g. based on information provided by the payee.

• Blue – Verification not applicable (RVNA): The bank may provide the reason, e.g., a technical malfunction, and additional information. These can be viewed on the processing page. Otherwise, please contact the bank.

Clicking on a line opens the page Edit SEPA recipient, which contains the dated information area VOP verifications. The field Recommended name is only filled in if there is a close match. With the button Apply, this name can be transferred to the area Edit SEPA recipient and saved immediately. The display name is also adjusted if it was previously identical. You can enter internally used names or abbreviations as display names. An alternative recipient who does not match the IBAN holder can only be entered in the field Ultimate recipient in the payment recording.

Figure: VOP verifications for SEPA recipients (detail)

Bank details

In the bank details, you as an administrator or manager can enable or disable verification of payee for each bank, check transmission parameters for completeness, and configure notifications for VOP checks. The default values can usually be retained. Configure exceptions to avoid rejections, errors, and delays in the process. To do this, select Settings – Banks and click on the desired bank.

Payments (tab)

The checkbox Permit verification of payee (VOP) determines whether SEPA payments with VOP verification can be submitted to this bank. Disable payee verification if the bank cannot offer this service (e.g., for technical reasons) or is not required to offer it (e.g., if it is located in a country that does not use the euro). If verification of payee is enabled, you only decide whether verification is actually desired when submitting a payment. The checkbox Enforce verification of payee (VOP) for individual payments only works when recipient verification is enabled. This controls whether there shall also be a choice for individual payments (which is not compliant with the rules). Only disable this checkbox if the bank expressly allows individual payments without verification of payee. Otherwise, the bank will reject these payments.

Figure: Bank settings – Payments (detail)

Sende parameters (tab)

Die Auftragsarten CTV, CCT, CIV, CIP (oder die entsprechenden BTFs) müssen bei SEPA-Überweisung und SEPA-Echtzeitüberweisung zugeordnet sein. Wenn die Bank andere Auftragsarten, BTFs oder spezielle Schemata verwendet, ändern Sie den Eintrag in der betroffenen Zeile.

Notifications (tab)

For Fetching of notifications for VOP results, the checkbox Activated must be selected in the respective section and the fetch order type VPZ or REP:DE:VOP_pain.002_ZIP must be specified. If the bank uses a different order type, enter it here. You can view notifications regarding VOP results under Orders – Notifications and print them as a PDF file.

If you do not retrieve VOP notifications, the VOP result is only available in the bank's accompanying ticket and in the payment overview when signing, as well as with stored recipients.

Order types / Permissions (tab)

In order to submit payments with verification of payee, the EBICS bank server must provide the order types CTV, CCT, CIV, CIP, and VPZ (or the corresponding BTFs). In addition, your subscriber at the bank needs permission for this. Update your bank connection so that all data is retrieved up to date. If something is still missing in your user profile, contact the bank to have the change made and then update again. Every user who is an initialized subscriber at this bank must perform this step.

Users who do not have permission for VOP order types automatically send SEPA transfers and instant transfers without requesting a verification of payee. Once the user profile provides the missing permissions, the verification of payee can be used.

Preferences

A personal user preference controls the preferred default setting for each user when submitting payments and files, with or without verification of payee.

Open the tab File transfers under Settings – Preferences. Select the entry Me personally under Settings for. Check or uncheck the box Activate verification of payee (VOP) by default as is the case for most of your payments. The checkbox for verification of payee is preselected when signing open payments and sending files.

Figure: Preferences for file transfers