The European Payments Council (EPC) has published an implementation update on the Verification of Payee (VOP) scheme, describing the 5 October 2025 go-live as a collective success and positioning VOP as a key end-user service to help make account-to-account payments safer and support payment service providers (PSPs) in meeting obligations under the SEPA Regulation as amended by the Instant Payments Regulation (IPR) (EU) 2024/886. Uptake in the first months of the adherence process was reported as strong: as of early November 2025, 2,785 PSPs had joined the scheme, 2,719 were able to operate and were reachable, and 58 Routing and Verification Mechanisms (RVMs) were active across 23 European countries. Scheme-wide reachability and interoperability were supported by the EPC Directory Service (EDS), which went live on 2 September 2025, and by the API Reference Toolbox (ART) platform for automated certification and interoperability. The EPC Secretariat managed nearly 1,400 support tickets opened between April and October 2025 and maintained a virtual chatroom for RVMs between 5 and 12 October to monitor deployment, with most technical issues resolved or mitigated in the weeks after launch; the EPC reported the overall project was delivered on time and within budget. The EPC expects participation to keep growing, with forecasts exceeding 3,000 PSPs by mid-2027, when IPR obligations extend to European Economic Area non-euro PSPs.

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