Central Bank of Latvia sets out 9 October 2025 Europe-wide requirement for payee name and IBAN matching before payments

The Central Bank of Latvia has outlined that, from 9 October 2025, a Europe-wide requirement will apply for the payer’s financial institution to cross-verify the recipient’s name and account number (name and account number matching) before initiating a payment. The check is intended to reduce fraud and errors by providing the payer with an informative notice of the matching result before the payment order is executed. The verification is to be performed by payment service providers before the payment is authorised by the payer and should be almost instant, taking no more than five seconds. It involves checking whether the entered payee bank account number (IBAN) matches the payee name or other identifiers such as a VAT number or legal entity identifier (LEI), and should be carried out before each payment, including repeated payments to the same payee and repeated regular credit transfers where an instant payment was rejected. The result does not remove the payer’s right to proceed with the payment using the originally provided details, and the payer remains responsible for the decision to execute or stop a payment where an irregularity is flagged; the check is not performed where the payer does not indicate the payee (for example, where details are extracted from a register of phone numbers and account numbers). The requirement applies to intrabank payments, traditional payments to customers of other banks, and instant payments. The central bank notes that it is one of two euro area central banks providing a service to verify the payee name against the provided IBAN, and that from 5 October 2025 it will also provide access to its instant verification service to interested payment service providers from other European countries.