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Mandatory complianceRequired for all SEPA Credit Transfers and Instant SEPA Credit Transfers under the European Instant Payments Regulation (IPR), with a mandatory implementation deadline of October 9, 2025, for all Payment Service Providers (PSPs) in the Eurozone offering SEPA Credit Transfers.

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What is Verification of Payee?

Verification of Payee (VoP) is a new requirement from the SEPA scheme that verifies the beneficiary information to reduce fraud and misdirected payments. VoP applies to all countries in the SEPA region, with mandatory implementation deadlines of October 9, 2025 for Eurozone PSPs and January 9, 2027 for non-Eurozone PSPs. The service is free of charge for Qonto account holders as mandated by the EPC’s regulation.

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How to Implement

Creating a SEPA transfer now requires 2 steps:
  • Step 1: Verify payee (i.e. VoP check): Call our new Verify Payee endpoint before creating any SEPA transfers. This API call returns:
    • the outcome of the verification (4 possible options)
    • a token
  • Step 2: Create a transfer: Call your existing transfer endpoint, but additionally include the token received in step 1

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Available verification endpoints

  • Single verification: Verify individual payee details with a POST request to /v2/sepa/verify_payee (see Verify SEPA payee)
  • Bulk verification: Verify multiple payees at once with a POST request to /v2/sepa/bulk_verify_payee (see Bulk verify SEPA payees)

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How to display VoP results to users

According to the new regulation, the VoP outcome must be displayed to the end-user initiating the payment, so they can make an informed decision before authorizing the transfer. Besides these technical changes, you will also need to make the following operational changes:
  • For manual transfers via API: the end-user must review the VoP outcome and make a decision based on the result
  • For automated transfers via API: we recommend including a manual review step whenever the VoP result is not a full match (i.e. MATCH_RESULT_MATCH)
Recommendations:
  • Close Match
For close match results (MATCH_RESULT_CLOSE_MATCH ), display the suggested name to the user: Close Match Result
  • No Match
For no match results (MATCH_RESULT_NO_MATCH ), display a warning message to the user to proceed with caution and offer the possibility to edit details: No Match Result
  • Verification not possible
For verification not possible results (MATCH_RESULT_NOT_POSSIBLE), display a warning message that the verification is unavailable: Verification Not Possible Result

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Testing with Sandbox

When testing Verification of Payee in the Sandbox environment, you can use specific mocked IBANs to simulate different verification outcomes without needing real bank accounts.

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Mocked IBANs

Use these IBANs to test different VoP scenarios:
IBANResultHTTP Status
Any external (not Qonto) IBAN that are not listed below{"matchResult": "MATCH_RESULT_MATCH"}200
FR9314508000301358631257V60{"matchResult": "MATCH_RESULT_CLOSE_MATCH", "matchedName": "Jon Jones"}200
FR2817569000504516495173I74{"matchResult": "MATCH_RESULT_NO_MATCH"}200
FR1817569000407557739829P63{"matchResult": "MATCH_RESULT_NOT_POSSIBLE"}200
FR7810096000302228946458K04GATEWAY_TIMEOUT_ERROR_RESPONDING_BANK504
FR4012739000504688938142V51BAD_REQUEST_ERROR_RESPONDING_BANK_INVALID_RESPONSE400
FR2610096000404733985874B91INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR_4XX_RESPONDING_BANK500
These mocked IBANs are only available in the Sandbox environment and will not work in production.