The EU Instant Payments Regulation will bring about changes to the security and speed of account payments. By 9 October, all banks in the euro area must support real-time instant payments. Additionally, security will be enhanced as the payees of instant payments and SEPA credit transfers will be verified in future.
You can decide whether to continue with a payment based on the verification results
When making a payment on OP-mobile or the op.fi service, the payee (name and account number) that you enter will be compared against the payee bank's records on the account holder. You will then be notified whether the payee matches the bank's records exactly, partially or not at all.
- If the payee's details match the bank's records exactly and the payee is known to you, you can continue to complete the payment.
- If the payee's details only partially match, take a pause and check the payee's name and account number one more time, in case of typos, for example.
- If the payee's details don't match the bank's records at all, consider the matter very carefully and cancel the payment, if needed. If you decide to make the payment even though the payee's name does not match the account holder's name, you do so at your own risk.
The purpose of this verification is to prevent payments from ending up on the wrong account due to an incorrect account number or fraud attempt. Payments will continue to be transferred solely based on the account number in future too.
To ensure your payment is transferred to the right payee, make sure that you
- use the payee's official first and last names when making a payment to a person.
- use the official name stated on the invoice when making a payment to a company.
- check all the details if you are using payment templates.
What else will change?
Along with these changes, we will also update the views related to making payments, in particular on the op.fi service. We seek to improve the user experience and accessibility of our service. For example, confirmed and unconfirmed payments, new payments and editing of payments will look a bit different in future.
Additional protection for your money with security limits
Once you have confirmed an instant credit transfer, the money will be transferred within 10 seconds between banks in the euro area. After that, the instant credit transfer can't be cancelled or returned. By 9 October, there will also be no euro-denominated upper limit for instant payments in the euro area.
By ensuring that you have set suitable security limits on your account and cards, you get additional protection for your money. You can set and change the limits easily on our digital services.