Verification of Payee

Verification of Payee (VoP) is a mandatory service for SEPA payments aimed at preventing misdirected and fraudulent payments by confirming that the payee's name matches the provided bank account details (IBAN).

Currently, when bank transfer payments are added to a batch and submitted, the batch payments are automatically sent unless approvals are enabled. When VoP comes into effect, the process for creating and processing batches will change. The account holder name assigned to a payee will be checked to see if it matches the name on the account held at the receiving institution. If you have opted in to VoP, you will be able to see the matching response we receive from the receiving institution and define your workflow based on the response.

VoP Responses

There are five possible responses to a VoP check.

The account holder name assigned to your payee is an exact match with the name held by the beneficiary account provider.

By calling our Get Batch Details endpoint, you will receive a JSON response for each payee in a batch, with one of the above results. This is useful for summarising information on the payees in a large batch. You can also call List Items for a bank transfer batch to see more detailed information on an individual batch item..

{
  "batchUuid": "F2AF3F2B-4406-4199-B249-B354F2CC6019",
  "type": "BANK_TRANSFER",
  "status": "COMPLETE",
  "sourceName": "Payment API",
  "batchName": "January 2018 Payroll",
  "jobNumber": "2018-01-PR",
  "callbackUrl": "https://my.webserver.com/cb/payroll",
  "currency": "EUR, GBP, USD",
  "numberOfItemsSubmitted": 4,
  "valueOfItemsSubmitted": 10000,
  "numberOfItemsFailed": 0,
  "valueOfItemsFailed": 0,
  "numberOfItemsSucceeded": 4,
  "valueOfItemsSucceeded": 10000,
  "lastUpdated": "2021-04-04T10:48:53.540Z",
  "dateCreated": "2021-04-04T10:48:53.540Z",
  "payeeChecks": {
    "countFullMatch": 1,
    "countPartialMatch": 1,
    "countNoMatch": 1,
    "countUnableToMatch": 1,
    "countPending": 0
  }
}

{
  "total": 1,
  "items": [
    {
      "batchItemUuid": "F2AF3F2B-4406-4199-B249-B354F2CC6019",
      "status": "PENDING_APPROVAL",
      "result": {
        "code": 500001,
        "message": "SUCCESS"
      },
      "dateCreated": "2021-04-04T10:48:53.540Z",
      "lastUpdated": "2021-04-04T10:48:53.540Z",
      "icanFrom": 2150,
      "amount": 10000,
      "myRef": "Testing a transfer via batch",
      "yourRef": "Testing a transfer via batch",
      "refId": 123782,
      "payeeType": "ACCOUNT_DETAILS",
      "payeeId": 1234567,
      "destIban": "IE63CPAYXXXXXXX792562",
      "destAccountHolerName": "John Doe",
      "payeeCheckStatus": "PARTIAL_MATCH",
      "payeeCheckPartialMatchName": "John Dome"
    } 
  ],
  "pagination": {
    "total_entries": 2,
    "total_pages": 1,
    "current_page": 1,
    "per_page": 25,
    "previous_page": -1,
    "next_page": -1,
    "order": "created_at",
    "order_asc_desc": "asc"
  }
}

Creating API applications

Opt in/Opt out criteria

You cannot opt out of the Verification of Payee check when adding new payees or sending payments through our web portal. Opting out is only allowed for multi-payment batches (i.e., batches containing more than one payment). This section applies only to API applications and batches.

Submitting large batches

If you have opted in to perform a VoP check on batch payments, we will perform the check when a batch item is added to the batch. The check result can take up to 5 seconds to be received from the beneficiary account provider so it will not be included in the response message. If you would like to check the result, you can call our Get Batch Details endpoint. This will summarise the results of the checks for all items in the batch. Please note it is not recommended to opt in for large batches. You can also call List Items for a bank transfer batch to see more detailed information on an individual batch item.

Single payment batches

Single payment batches do not fall under the opt out exemption for VoP checks. For any batches containing only one payment, a VoP check will be performed.

If you have opted in, we will perform the check on every batch item as it is added to the batch. You can call our Get Batch Details endpoint to view the result of this check.