Overview
- Under EU Regulation 2024/886, the Verification of Payee system becomes mandatory across the euro area, covering SEPA transfers both instant and classic.
- Banks will query the recipient’s bank in real time, which has five seconds to respond with an exact match, partial match, no match or an inability to verify.
- For minor typos, banks may display the correct account name to let customers fix it, while significant mismatches trigger an alert without revealing the true holder and the sender can proceed at their own risk.
- The Fédération bancaire française says the free service targets identity usurpation and RIB manipulation, and it urges users to update saved beneficiaries with full legal names rather than nicknames to avoid delays.
- Recent reporting highlights a sharp rise in transfer scams, with French losses cited at €312 million in 2023 and a 30% jump in 2024 incidents, and an EU review of the measure is slated for 2026.