European Payments Council launches EPC Directory Service in live mode for the Verification Of Payee scheme

The European Payments Council has launched the EPC Directory Service (EDS) in live mode to support the Verification Of Payee (VOP) scheme. VOP scheme participants, Routing and/or Verification Mechanisms (RVMs), and their users that were registered during the test phase are automatically recognised in the live environment without needing to register again. Data entered into the test EDS before 22 August 2025 at 19:00 CET has been migrated to live for review and updates, while data entered after that cut-off was not migrated and must be re-entered in live. The test environment remains available for testing. For production configuration, EDS enforces the VOP “Scheme Operational Readiness Date” (ORD) to be at least the current date plus three calendar days and, in line with the rulebook, the ORD must be set to 5 October 2025 or later; participants that set an earlier ORD during the pilot are asked to update it. The EPC also highlights operational settings such as switching on “Publish in EDS local file” to be reachable by the ORD, setting production URIs to the “LIVE” environment with start date-times aligned to the ORD, and entering responding-role VOP API endpoints and (optionally) supported options. Further information on cut-off times for updating EDS data and on the daily publishing of the EDS local file is expected by mid-September. The EPC also encourages PSPs and RVMs to begin end-to-end live “penny tests” after go-live by setting an ORD on or after 5 October 2025 and configuring test URIs in the live environment with the “TEST” environment attribute and appropriate start date-times.