With the 2025 deadline for the Verification of Payee (VoP) scheme fast approaching, financial institutions must act now. Learn how EPC regulations impact SEPA payments and instant transactions.

In the world of financial services, resilience isn’t a nice-to-have—it’s the foundation on which trust is built. Whether it's processing mortgage payments, ensuring businesses can pay their suppliers, or enabling everyday card transactions, the reliability of payment infrastructure is non-negotiable. Customers expect instant access to their money, and regulators demand that financial institutions maintain robust contingency plans to avoid catastrophic service failures. 

Payment modernisation has become a very important topic for banks over the last few years. For a long time, payment infrastructures in the UK, Europe and the US wasn’t a priority for investment. As long as the infrastructure was able to keep things ticking over, there seemed to be little reason to upgrade it.  

Explore the essential details of Verification of Payee (VoP) regulation for European banks, including regulatory requirements, benefits, and implementation steps. 

For years, mid-sized banks have struck a balance between personalized service and strong operational capabilities, competing with both large national banks and emerging fintechs. However, as the payments landscape rapidly evolves, that balance is shifting. The rise of real-time payments (RTP) is redefining customer expectations, and financial institutions that do not move quickly to offer instant payments risk losing market share to competitors that do. 

What does a world without batch processing look like? That’s the future many payments leaders are working toward, and it was a major topic in a recent Payments Valkyries podcast, where Miriam Sheril from Form3 and other industry experts explored how real-time payments are reshaping the banking landscape.

In this dynamic environment, financial institutions that delay adopting instant payments risk falling behind their more proactive competitors. Beyond meeting customer expectations, the ability to process payments in real time offers significant operational efficiencies and revenue potential, making participation in the RTP network a strategic imperative for banks and credit unions of all sizes.

The key trends shaping the payments industry in 2025 are likely to be iterations on key themes we have seen in the industry for year, but what new dynamics do we expect to see? Key to answering this question is to kick off with a review of 2024, and look at how this is likely to influence 2025 activity.