Starting Thursday, 9 October, Isabel 6 will perform an IBAN verification for SEPA payments that are manually entered in the 'Payment' and 'Payment Group' wizards.
For now, this verification won't apply to uploaded payment files from your accounting software or ERP. They will follow later this year. Always remain vigilant against fraud when uploading payment files from your ERP or accounting software without an IBAN-name check. In the meantime, you can always perform an additional verification of new counterparties by temporarily entering the payment manually in Isabel 6. Further information will follow as soon as the IBAN-name check becomes available for uploaded payment files.
What is "Verification of the beneficiary's name"?
Verification of the beneficiary's name, also known as IBAN name check or Verification of Payee (VoP), is a service designed to verify that the name associated with an IBAN matches the counterparty name provided with the payment. This enhances the security of financial transactions by reducing the risk of sending payments to the wrong account, whether by mistake or fraud.
Verification of the beneficiary's name is becoming increasingly common as a fraud prevention measure. Successful implementations in countries like the Netherlands and the UK—where this measure has been proven to significantly reduce fraud cases—have paved the way for European regulation, which will standardize this approach across the eurozone.
This European regulation will enforce the verification of the beneficiary's name to become mandatory for all SEPA payments starting from October 9, 2025(*).
(*) Non-EUR countries are only required to adopt this service as of July 9, 2027. Initiating payments towards such counterparties might lead to the bank not yet being available for the VoP service.
Non-EUR countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Poland, Romania, United Kingdom (including Gibraltar and the Crown Dependencies of Guernsey, Jersey, and the Isle of Man), Switzerland and Sweden.
What will change in Isabel 6?
As of October 9
Encode payments
When encoding payments (using the Payment or Group of Payments wizard), a verification is performed on the beneficiary's account. You will be warned if the beneficiary's name does not match the actual account holder, indicating that funds could potentially be transferred to the wrong beneficiary. In such cases, you are invited to double-check the details before completing the payment. Based on the returned information, you can then make an informed decision to continue, modify (when applicable), or cancel the payment.
Exact match: The name and IBAN match, and you can proceed with the payment:
Close match: The name provided is similar to the account holder's name, and the system may suggest the correct name:
You can then click on the correct name to update the payment.
No match: The name and IBAN do not match. This could indicate a potential error or fraud:
/
Unable to check: When the counterparty's bank's verification service is unavailable, the bank does not propose a verification service yet, or is unable to pair the account number with a beneficiary name (e.g. with factoring accounts)
All verification results are stored and can be consulted again when viewing the transaction details, by any user that can access the transaction or transaction group.
In case of a close match or no match, additional information may be provided to help determine the account holder name:
Legal entities: in the event of an error, the legal name of the account number’s holder is suggested (*).
Private persons: a message will indicate that the account belongs to a private person. This serves as an additional warning to the payer, should they wish to transfer to a legal entity (e.g. for an invoice)
The payer is notified when a bank account has been closed.
Example: IBAN BE22 0910 1205 8947 owned by Isabel
Entered name | Result | Possible additional info |
Isabel |
|
|
Isabelle |
| The entered name almost matches the name of the beneficiary. (*) Did you mean Isabel? |
Multibanking |
| The entered name does not match the name of the beneficiary. If you proceed, the money could be sent to the wrong beneficiary.
The account belongs to a legal entity and the entered name does not match the name of the beneficiary. If you proceed, the money could be sent to the wrong beneficiary.
The account belongs to the legal entity and the entered name does not match the name of the beneficiary, (*) which is Isabel. If you proceed, the money could be sent to the wrong beneficiary. |
View Transaction and Sent Transaction Details
For each beneficiary in the payment, a verification result is shown:
- Exact match: The name and IBAN match.
- Close match: The name provided is similar to the account holder's name.
- No match: The name and IBAN do not match. This could indicate a potential error or fraud.
- / Unable to check: When the counterparty's bank's verification service is unavailable, the bank does not propose a verification service yet, or is unable to pair the account number with a beneficiary name (e.g. with factoring accounts)
Sign payments
During signing, a summary highlights payments where beneficiary names differ from the intended recipients. The signer can review details of these payments or payment groups from this summary. The signer must then decide whether to cancel the signing or proceed, acknowledging that accepting unmatched names may result in funds being transferred to the wrong beneficiary.
At a later stage, uploaded payment files (manual uploads, Isabel GO, Isabel Connect, or Isabel Corporate Synchroniser) will also be subject to name verification.
After uploading a payment file, Isabel will validate all the beneficiaries within the file. This verification is done in the background and does not require any action.
Once the verification is completed, the outcome can be consulted by any user that can access the transaction file.
Users will be able to opt-out from this validation. This opt-out will only be applied for payment files containing 2 payments or more.
Which payments will be verified?
As of October 9, all manually encoded SEPA payments will be verified (*)
SEPA Direct Debit instructions and non-SEPA payments will not be verified.
(*) Non-EUR countries are only required to adopt this service as of July 9, 2027. Initiating payments towards such counterparties might lead to the bank not yet being available for the VoP service.
Non-EUR countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Poland, Romania, United Kingdom (including Gibraltar and the Crown Dependencies of Guernsey, Jersey, and the Isle of Man), Switzerland and Sweden.
How does Isabel 6 know whether a beneficiary's name and account number correspond?
The verification result is not determined by Isabel, but retrieved via an RVM (Routing and/or Verification Mechanism). Every bank in Europe has chosen an RVM with which it cooperates. These RVMs ensure that banks and other payment service providers (such as Isabel) can request the verification result.
Isabel only shares the minimum information necessary to request the verification result (the account number and the name entered) with the RVM. Other payment details (such as amount, initiator, message, etc.) are not shared with the RVM.
What should I do when I see a partial match or no match?
If a suggestion is proposed, verify if it matches the counterparty you intended to pay to. If so, update your counterparty to match the suggested information, to ensure an exact match with the next payment.
When there is no suggestion, contact your beneficiary and ask to provide the correct name to which this account is registered at their bank. Update the counterparty accordingly.
⚠️ Always contact your beneficiary using a trusted channel.
How do I update beneficiaries in an uploaded file?
As the source of the file is another application, and data needs to be consistent between the source application and the bank, you can only update the beneficiaries in the source application and create a new file.
Will my payment be executed if the name and account number do not match?
Verifying the beneficiary's name helps you to spot any errors, but does not affect the execution of your payment: once you accept the verification result, the payment will be processed.
How long does it take to verify the beneficiary's name?
Expected processing time as communicated by the verification of payee provider:
| Action | Response time | |
| Encode | Result is shown after encoding or selecting the beneficiary in the payment wizard | A few seconds |
| Upload | Transactions per batch | |
| 1-50 | Up to 1 minute | |
| 51-1000 | Up to 5 minutes | |
| 1001-10.000 | 5 - 20 minutes | |
| 10.001 - 100.000 | 20 minutes - 1 hour | |
I am in a hurry.
You can choose to continue and sign/send the payment while verification results aren't available yet. In case you do continue, you accept that the money could be sent to the wrong beneficiary.
In case the payment requires multiple signatures, the verification will continue in the background for the next signer.
I am sure I am paying the correct counterparty, yet the verification result shows "no match".
The verification result does not necessarily mean that the counterparty account number is wrong; It informs you that the account holder name that is registered with the counterparty's bank does not match the name you provided.
You could try if any of these suggestions results in a match:
- The company's full name, official name, or commercial name;
- An acronym, abbreviation, or translation the company is commonly known by;
- In case of an account held by a private person, use the full first and last name.
When in doubt, contact your counterparty via a trusted channel.
Can I opt out of verification of the beneficiary's name?
For uploaded files containing more than 1 payment, you can choose to disable this verification. As a default it will be enabled. You can change this for the files you personally upload, via Preferences > Transactions.
The signer will have to accept the risk that the money could be sent to the wrong beneficiary, or can choose to run the name check afterwards from within the individual transaction group details.
For Isabel Corporate Synchoniser, contact customer care if you would like to request an opt-out for payments uploaded via your ICS server.
Can I already prepare my counterparties today?
Partially:
Verification of Payee only provides an ad-hoc response (match or no match) when creating a payment instruction. As such, it is not designed to bulk update your counterparties.
In both your ERP and Isabel 6, you can already verify whether the beneficiary's name matches the one provided on past invoices.
For legal entities in Belgium, both registered names at their bank and legal names, abbreviations, and trade names registered in the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises (Kruispuntbank van Ondernemingen, KBO) will be considered. The latter will be effective by 9 October 2025 at the latest.
⚠️ FRAUD WARNING!
The increased attention to the Verification of Payee process may lead fraudsters to attempt to deceive you into registering their account name and number as belonging to a legitimate business. Be especially cautious if you receive an email or letter requesting a correction to an account number. Always confirm such requests directly with your counterparty via a trusted communication channel. If you suspect a fraudulent attempt to alter counterparty information, promptly notify your bank or Isabel.
Will Isabel offer the option to integrate the verification results into my ERP or accounting software?
We are currently investigating the possibility of integration. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you are interested in this function.
In Isabel 6, you can create a TXT report of your upload files and their verification results. This report contains structured data that you can view in Excel or process with other software:
- In the transaction overview screen, select your files and choose Create report.
- Select Details and TXT format.
- Download the report from My reports.
Excel Example:
- In Excel, select Data > From Text/CSV, and select the downloaded report.
- You will see the original counterparty in columns H, I, J and the verification result and any suggestions in columns Q, R, S.
I know the counterparty by a different name, and would like to keep that name for easy searching.
In Isabel 6, a counterparty has an alias, for search purposes, and an official name, used in the payment instructions. The verification process applies to the official name. The alias can still contain your preferred name.