The European Payments Council (EPC) has published a set of standard test cases for the Verification of Payee (VOP) scheme to help stakeholders implement and test the IBAN-to-Account Holding Bank Identification Code (BIC) mapping needed to route VOP requests to the correct responding payment service provider (PSP). In the VOP scheme, a requesting PSP or its Routing and/or Verification Mechanism must derive the Account Holding BIC from the beneficiary’s IBAN to identify the relevant responding PSP and retrieve connectivity details from the EPC Directory Service. The EPC test set provides reference (masked) IBANs, IBAN-prefixes and corresponding expected Account Holding BICs across European Economic Area countries, allowing PSPs, routing mechanisms, directory service providers and IT providers to verify that their mapping solutions return the expected BIC; an Excel-based IBAN generator is included to support validation with actual test IBANs. The EPC expects to enrich the file and publish periodic updates.
European Payments Council 2025-10-02
European Payments Council publishes standard IBAN-to-BIC test cases to support Verification of Payee routing
The European Payments Council (EPC) released standard test cases for the Verification of Payee (VOP) scheme to aid stakeholders in implementing IBAN-to-BIC mapping for routing VOP requests. The test set includes reference IBANs, prefixes, and expected BICs for European Economic Area countries, with an Excel-based IBAN generator for validation. The EPC plans to periodically update the file.