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(*).  

Isabel will roll out this verification to all Isabel 6 customers, end September, beginning of October.  

(*) 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.

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. 

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. 

Upload payments (manual, Isabel GO, Isabel Connect, Isabel Corporate Synchroniser) 

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. 

Sign payments 

When signing, an overview is displayed listing all payments to beneficiaries whose names do not exactly match the intended recipients. 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. 

View Transaction Details 

For each beneficiary in the payment, a verification result is shown: 

• 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. 
• 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. 

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	Match
Isabele	Close match	The entered name almost matches the name of the beneficiary.  (*) Did you mean Isabel?
Multibanking	No match	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.

As of October 9, all 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.  

With each payment, the information is verified with SurePay, which is the preferred service provider of the Belgian banking sector for this purpose. 
https://febelfin.be/en/press-room/fraude-veiligheid/belgian-banking-sector-chooses-preferred-supplier-for-iban-name-check

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. 

Expected processing time as communicated by the verification of payee provider:

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.  

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.

For uploaded files containing more than 1 payment, you can choose to disable this verification. Any Isabel 6 user will be able to choose to disable this feature for all the payments they create.  

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. 

For Isabel Corporate Synchoniser, contact customer care if you would like to request an opt-out for payments uploaded via your ICS server. 

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.

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.