Verification of Payee (VoP) is an EU-wide standard for confirming that a payment recipient's name matches their IBAN, introduced by the European Payments Council (EPC) under the SEPA regulatory framework. This standard applies to payment service providers (PSPs) — banks, payment institutions, and other financial entities that process payments — and has been mandatory for PSPs in the eurozone, as part of the EU Instant Payments Regulation (IPR). The goal is to reduce fraud and misdirected payments by verifying payee data before a transfer completes.

Sumsub VoP check allows you to verify whether the name associated with a submitted IBAN matches the account holder name registered with the relevant financial institution within SEPA.

Availability of the underlying data may vary depending on the jurisdiction and the financial institution.

How verification of payee works

VoP check verifies the submitted IBAN against the payee name. The payee name can come from one of the following sources:

• Applicant profile data.
• Data provided in the request.

For payment method checks, the IBAN is passed as the account number.

Supported integration flows

You can use VoP сheck in the following flows:

Enable VoP сheck

The following is a sequence of steps to be taken to enable Verification of Payee check.

1. Contact the Sumsub support team to enable the following services:
   • Payment Method Check (Verification of Payee)
   • Payment Method Check Advanced
2. Create a verification level that requires payment method verification.
3. Enable the following settings:
   • Perform VOP check
   • Risk check

Run VoP check via API

To run VoP check via API, create an applicant action using a payment source action level.

Pass the payee name and IBAN number via this API method.

Request example:

curl -X POST \
     'https://api.sumsub.com/resources/applicantActions/-/forApplicant/63e096c51b6b4030f2e01154/?levelName=action%20paymentSource%20level-name' \
     -H 'content-type: application/json' \
     -H 'X-App-Token: <your-app-token>' \
     -H 'X-App-Access-Sig: <your-signature>' \
     -H 'X-App-Access-Ts: <unix-timestamp>' \
     -d '{
            "paymentSource": {
              "fixedInfo": {
                "type": "bankStatement",
                "fullName": "John Doe",
                "accountIdentifier": "GB82MTCH00000000000000"
              }
            },
            "externalActionId": "yourActionId"
          }'

VoP сheck results

VoP check can return the following results:

View VoP check results

To view the VoP check results, in the Dashboard:

1. Navigate to the Applicants section and open the applicant of your interest.
2. Scroll down to the Payment source check section that refers to VoP check.

For API flow, retrieve the applicant action result after creating and running the action.

Test VoP check in Sandbox

You can test VoP Check results in Sandbox without calling the real VoP provider.

To start testing:

1. Switch to Sandbox.

2. Create a verification level that requires payment method verification.

3. To receive a specific result, submit one of the mock IBANs from the table below using one of the following methods:

   • Submit the data using this API method.
   • In the Dashboard, go to the applicant profile, open the Payment Methods tab -> Payment source, fill in the fields, and click Submit fields.