Verification of Payee – SEPA
Verification of Payee (VoP) is a beneficiary banking details checking service. It is designed to carry out verification on beneficiary name and IBAN (International Bank Account Number) prior to approving and executing a payment.
The Verification of Payee (VoP) service will be introduced in October 2025 to help reduce fraud and to give the payer greater confidence when making SEPA payments. This applies for SEPA and SEPA Instant Payment in the SEPA zone.
How do I, as a customer, need to prepare?
To ensure a smooth experience, we advise you to make the following preparations:
Preparations on your part, to be ready at Go-Live on 5th October:
- Payments made to you
Make sure the name you use on your invoices matches the name registered to your account.
It is important that you provide whoever is making a payment into your account with your legal or business name (as registered in the official register of your respective country). - Payments you make
It is important that you review and verify the information in your Accounts Payable or Master Vendor Data in your ERP or other payment systems. The beneficiary’s name must match the name held by the beneficiary's bank, along with the corresponding bank account details.
Process and key information
How will it work after Go-Live on 5th October?
- Payments made to you
It is important that you provide whoever is making a payment into your account with your legal or business name (as registered in the official register of your respective country). - Payments you make
When you make a SEPA or SEPA Instant payment, a VoP check will be made against the name on the account you want to pay by the beneficiary’s bank and you will be notified immediately as to whether the payment details you have entered are a match, a close match or no match. You will then be able to take appropriate action.
It is important to note that VoP is a pre-payment check. Once the name has been checked, you still need to instruct the payment as the final step.
The VoP check will generate one of four responses:
- Match – You will receive confirmation that all the details match.
- Close match – This means that the name on the account does not exactly match what you have provided. You will be provided with a suggested name, so please verify if the suggested name is correct. If it doesn’t look right, or you're unsure, contact the person or business you are trying to pay to confirm their details.
- No match – We will inform you that it is not a match and advise you to contact the person or business you are trying to pay, to obtain the correct account name and number before proceeding with any payments.
- Verification check not possible – We will notify you if the Verification of Payee service is unavailable at the time of checking or if there is another issue causing the failure. You will be advised to try again later.
When checking payment details, it’s important to contact the person or business using a phone number you trust. Never use a phone number provided in an email or text message, as these can be faked by criminals to deceive you.
Never be pressurised into proceeding with a payment when the details don’t match, or if the account cannot be checked.
Will this impact file payments?
Yes, but more information will be provided regarding Verification of Payee for file payments once the market practices are settled. There will be an opt out option, but only for file payments that includes multiple transactions.
Questions and answers about Verification of Payee
Answers provided below are relevant after Go-Live on 5th October.
Verification of Payee (VoP), to be introduced in October 2025, aims to give customers greater confidence when making payments, to ensure that they are paying the correct payee. SEB is introducing this name checking service to help protect against fraud, i.e. so called “authorised push payment” scams. These are scams where people are tricked into sending money to fraudsters pretending to be people or company they are not. It will also help avoid simple mistakes like misspelled account details when you set up a new payment. Finally, the VoP service is mandated by the EU Instant Payment Regulation, so all banks in the SEPA area will need to comply with it and offer the service to their end-customers.
Verification of Payee, when introduced, will be available both in SEB online banking tool, Business Arena, as well as in any file payments sent through File Handling Service (FHS), Global Corporate Access (GCA), Global Corporate Access over EBICS (GCAoE) or CAoS (Corporate Access over Swift).
Payments you make:
When you make a SEPA or SEPA Instant payment, a VoP check will be made against the name on the account you want to pay by the beneficiary’s bank and you will be notified immediately as to whether the payment details you have entered are a match, a close match or no match. You will then be able to take appropriate action.
It is important to note that VoP is a pre-payment check. Once the name has been checked you still have to instruct the payment to be made as a final step.
Payments made to you:
The account details you provide to the person or business who is trying to pay you will be VoP checked against the actual name held on your account.
The Payment Service Provider (usually the bank) of the person or business you are paying will decide, if the name and account details sent to them for the VoP check are a match. The bank account servicing bank will send their response to SEB, and this will be shown to you before executing the payment.
This means that the name on the account does not exactly match what you have provided. You will be provided with a suggested name, so please check if the suggested name provided is correct and store the correct name for the possible later use. If it doesn’t look right, or you’re not sure, contact the person or business you are trying to pay to check their details.
This means that the service is unavailable at the time of checking or there is another possible reason to request failure, and we will advise you to try later. If the situation will continue despite many retrials, we advise you to contact the person or business you are trying to pay, to clear with their bank what might be the reason for this response.
Payment made to you:
If you have a SEB EUR account in Finland, Germany or Luxembourg, SEB’sVoP responses will be sent to the one paying to your account.
Payments you make:
If you are a payer and have a SEB EUR account in Finland, Germany or Luxembourg you will be able to verify the beneficiary before proceeding with your SEPA payment. If the beneficiary has their account within the EUR-zone, you can expect to receive an answer. If you are sending a SEPA payment to a non-EUR country, you will receive a response if the beneficiary bank is VoP reachable.
If you are paying a person, please use their first name and last name. If you are paying a business, please use the legal or business name registered to their account. You may need to contact the recipient to obtain the correct name held on the account. Make sure that this matches what you expect, based on the person or business you intend to pay.
When you are initiating single payments, in the online channels or in the file flow, it is mandatory to perform the VoP check. You can always proceed with the payment, independent of the VoP result. If you are a corporate customer sending multiple payment transactions in one file, you will have the option to opt-out from the service. But keep in mind that single payment transactions in the file flow will be VoP checked, and wait for your action if there is a close or no match on the beneficiary details.
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