Central Bank of Latvia details 9 October 2025 Europe-wide requirement for payee name and IBAN verification before payments

The Central Bank of Latvia has published an update on the upcoming requirement for the payer’s financial institution to verify that the recipient’s name matches the provided bank account number (IBAN) before initiating a payment, which becomes uniformly applicable across Europe from 9 October 2025. The verification is designed to provide near-instant feedback to help mitigate fraud and payment errors, while preserving the payer’s right to proceed with the payment even if a mismatch is identified. Payment service providers must complete the check before the payment is authorised, matching the entered IBAN against the payee’s name or other identifiers such as a VAT number or legal entity identifier. The process should take no more than five seconds and should be performed before each payment, including repeated payments to the same payee and re-initiated credit transfers following a rejected instant payment. The requirement applies to intrabank payments, traditional payments to customers of other banks and instant payments, and does not apply where the payer does not indicate the payee, such as when payee details are extracted from a register of phone numbers and account numbers; the payer remains responsible for the decision to proceed where irregularities are flagged. The Central Bank of Latvia also notes that it is one of two euro area central banks offering a payee-name verification service and will provide access to its instant verification service to interested payment service providers from other European countries from 5 October 2025.