Regulation 7 min read

Verification of Payee and the EPC Scheme Rulebook

Verification of Payee is not a single product but a scheme: a shared rulebook from the European Payments Council that lets banks ask and answer the same question. Here is what that means.

By Verification of Payee EU · powered by RoxPay

Key takeaways

  • The EPC scheme rulebook defines roles, message formats, outcomes and timing for VoP.
  • PSPs participate as requesting parties, responding parties, or both.
  • Joining via a provider on the scheme is usually faster than building adherence alone.

Verification of Payee interoperates across Europe because it is governed by a scheme — a rulebook published by the European Payments Council (EPC) that all participants follow. The rulebook is what lets a bank in one country ask a bank in another whether a name matches an account and get a standardised answer. Without it, every PSP pair would need a bespoke integration.

What the rulebook defines

  • The roles: requesting PSP (asks) and responding PSP (answers about its account holders).
  • The standardised outcomes: match, close match, no match, not available.
  • Message formats, timing expectations, and how participants must behave.

What participation involves

Adhering to the scheme means meeting its technical and operational requirements as a requesting party, a responding party, or both.

  1. 1 Decide which role(s) you need based on whether you initiate payments, hold accounts, or both.
  2. 2 Meet the rulebook's technical and operational requirements.
  3. 3 Connect to the scheme, directly or through a provider that already adheres.

A scheme, not a point integration

Because VoP is scheme-based, joining once gives reach to every other participant — far more efficient than integrating bank by bank.

RoxPay operates on the SEPA VoP scheme, so you get rulebook-compliant requesting and responding capability through a single integration instead of managing adherence from scratch.

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FAQ

Frequently asked

It is the shared set of rules from the European Payments Council that defines roles, message formats, standardised outcomes and timing, so all participating PSPs can interoperate.

A requesting PSP asks whether a name matches an account before a payment; a responding PSP answers those requests about its own account holders. Many PSPs do both.

Not necessarily. You can connect through a provider already adhering to the scheme, which is usually faster than building and maintaining adherence alone.

Keep reading

Being a Responding PSP What the responding role involves. The Instant Payments Regulation & VoP The regulation behind the scheme.

Join the VoP scheme faster

Talk to RoxPay about rulebook-compliant Verification of Payee through one integration.

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