VOP matching

VOP

An article by

Andreas Wegmann

Published on

20/02/2025

Updated on

21/02/2025

Reading time

2 min

Verification of Payee (VOP) will become mandatory for SEPA banks in October 2025 together with active participation in SEPA Instant Payments. Before a transfer is made, it should be possible to check whether the IBAN and the name of a (legal) person as defined by the person making the transfer match. However, this match may deviate slightly (close match). This article is about this “VOP matching”.

match vs. close match

The assessment of whether a name is spelt correctly or almost correctly is of particular importance in VOP matching. If a bank returns a “close match” in response to a query, it must also return the correct name. If this response results in any kind of disadvantage for the requesting party, the bank is liable for its response.

VOP Matching

The legal dispute over such a case alone would be very costly. VOP matching should therefore not be taken lightly.

VOP Matching method

The EPC regulations and recommendations on VOP matching specify a number of procedures that should be used to determine a “close match” case. These are various techniques that are well known and proven.

To avoid liability risks, the procedures recommended by the EPC should be implemented without own interpretation. Unfortunately, not all conceivable cases are described or covered by a recommendation.

Examples of VOP matching

The obvious problems with titles, abbreviations, spelling mistakes and umlauts or foreign character sets can be easily understood in the table with the examples.

The problem with a joint account described in the last line is explained again here: Since the enquiry abbreviates the first name (M.), but the account contains two first names with “M”, a return of “Maximilian Mustermann” may not be correct. After all, Mrs Mustermann may also have the title “Prof. Dr.” and may be meant by the enquiring party.