Verification of Payee

Verification of Payee (VoP) is a name and IBAN verification service that checks whether the payee name provided by the payer matches the account holder name at the receiving payment service provider (PSP).

VoP is designed to help users avoid making payments to the wrong person, thus reducing fraud and misdirected payments and enhancing payer confidence. VoP is a pre-authorisation check, meaning it must be completed before each payment is initiated.

Under the EU Instant Payments Regulation, from October 2025, integration with a VoP service is required to continue sending and receiving SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT) and SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst) payments. A VoP check is required each time a payment is sent, not just when sending to a new payee for the first time.

Clients may choose to utilise our VOP Requesting service to initiate VoP checks, or alternatively, integrate with a provider of their choice. Clients must utilise ClearBank's VoP Responding service, when using a ClearBank BIC, however this requires no integration on your side. If your PSP is based outside of the Eurozone, then you will not automatically become VoP reachable as the VoP regime will only be applicable to those PSPs from 2027.

Note: In order to use the VoP endpoint in the production environment, you must complete a test pack and self-certify your testing. For more details, please reach out to our EU API team.

The VoP service will query the account holder name at the receiving PSP in real-time and indicate whether the details match, and if so, whether there is a full or partial match.

For example, if the remitter intends to pay 'Maria Green', but the account belongs to 'John Taylor', our VoP endpoint will return NMTC - No match. The following table defines each of the VoP outcomes with examples:

Code	Meaning	Definition	Provided name	Actual name
MTCH	Exact match	The name provided by the payer matches the account holder’s name at the receiving bank.	Maria Green	Maria Green
CMTC	Close match	The name is similar but not identical, or there’s a mismatch in account type (for example, personal vs business).	ABC Solicitors	ABC Solicitor Ltd
NMTC	No match	The name provided does not match the account holder’s name.	Maria Green	John Taylor
NOAP	Can't match/Verification not possible	The check cannot be completed due to missing or incompatible data.	N/A	N/A

A NOAP result may be received if:

The account is not reachable via VoP.
The account is held at a PSP not participating in the VoP scheme.
VoP check timed out due to slow or no response from receiving PSP (response SLA of 5 seconds)
Technical issues prevent the check.

The following message flow diagram shows the steps involved in using the Verification of Payee endpoint:

Verification of Payee message flow diagram showing the VoP POST /open-banking/vop/v1/payees/single endpoint being called and providing the intended payee's details. ClearBank then conduct the VoP check with the responding PSP and provide the result in the 200 response. The result is presented to the end user who can then decide whether to proceed with the payment depending on the result.

Only the following field combinations are valid when submitting a VoP request. Note that IBAN is a required field so must be populated in every request in combination with either:

Name, or
Identification > OrganisationId > LEI, or
Identification > OrganisationId > anyBIC, or
Identification > OrganisationId > Others > IdentificationNumber and SchemeNameCode, or
Identification > OrganisationId > Others > IdentificationNumber and SchemeNameProprietary

Check payee account name

post/open-banking/vop/v1/payees/single

This endpoint is used to conduct a Verification of Payee check using the details of the intended payee against the account holder name at the receiving payment service provider (PSP).

Parameters

Authorization string, header, Required
Your API Token, obtained from the ClearBank Portal.
DigitalSignature string, header, Required
Signed hash of the body of the request. The hash is signed by your private key.
X-Request-Id string, header, Required
A unique identifier for the request; valid for 24 hours, max length 83.

Request Payload (application/json)

party object, Required
The details of the intended payee to be checked against the account at the receiving PSP. You need to include EITHER name OR identification as shown in the groups below.
partyAccount object, Required
The account details of the intended payee to be checked against the account at the receiving PSP.
partyAgent object, Required
The details of the receiving PSP who holds the account of the payee.
unstructuredRemittanceInformation array
Additional information related to the payment to include unstructured details for the beneficiary, such as invoice numbers, references, or other contextual information. Only one entry will be used. Limited to 140 characters per entry.
Maximum length
140

request

{
  "party": {
    "name": "Mrs Mary L Green"
  },
  "partyAccount": {
    "iban": "NL59ABNA8424598490"
  },
  "partyAgent": {
    "financialInstitutionId": {
      "bicfi": "CLRBNL2AXXX"
    }
  },
  "unstructuredRemittanceInformation": "Transfer Ref 1886495537461152"
}

Code copied

Response (application/json)

200 OK
400 Bad Request

OK

{
  "partyNameMatch": "MTCH",
  "partyIdMatch": "null",
  "matchedName": "null"
}

Code copied

Bad Request

{
  "type": "string",
  "title": "string",
  "status": 0,
  "detail": "string",
  "instance": "string",
  "errors": {
    "property1": [
      "string"
    ],
    "property2": [
      "string"
    ]
  },
  "property1": null,
  "property2": null
}

Code copied

Party name:

{
  "party": {
    "name": "Mrs Mary L Green"
  },
  "partyAccount": {
    "iban": "NL59ABNA8424598490"
  },
  "partyAgent": {
    "financialInstitutionId": {
      "bicFi": "CLRBNL2AXXX"
    }
  }
}

LEI:

{
  "party": {
    "identification": {
      "organisationId": {
        "lei": "646700J3LMYRBDP9MA86"
      }
    }
  },
  "partyAccount": {
    "iban": "NL59ABNA8424598490"
  },
  "partyAgent": {
    "financialInstitutionId": {
      "bicFi": "CLRBNL2AXXX"
    }
  }
}

anyBIC:

{
  "party": {
    "identification": {
      "organisationId": {
        "AnyBIC": "ABNANL2AXXX"
      }
    }
  },
  "partyAccount": {
    "iban": "NL59ABNA8424598490"
  },
  "partyAgent": {
    "financialInstitutionId": {
      "bicFi": "CLRBNL2AXXX"
    }
  }
}

identificationNumber with schemeNameCode:

{
  "party": {
    "identification": {
      "organisationId": {
        "others": {
          "identificationNumber": "DE89ZZZ44862148843541",
          "schemeNameCode": "CUST",
          "issuer": "string"
        }
      }
    }
  },
  "partyAccount": {
    "iban": "NL59ABNA8424598490"
  },
  "partyAgent": {
    "financialInstitutionId": {
      "bicFi": "CLRBNL2AXXX"
    }
  }
}

identificationNumber with schemeNameProprietary:

{
  "party": {
    "identification": {
      "organisationId": {
        "others": {
          "identificationNumber": "DE89ZZZ44862148843541",
          "schemeNameProprietary": "Prtry",
          "issuer": "string"
        }
      }
    }
  },
  "partyAccount": {
    "iban": "NL59ABNA8424598490"
  },
  "partyAgent": {
    "financialInstitutionId": {
      "bicFi": "CLRBNL2AXXX"
    }
  }
}

You can test your handling of the VoP outcomes in our simulation environment by populating the unstructuredRemittanceInformation field with the following:

Field value	Result
["--match--"]	Simulates a match response
["--nomatch--"]	Simulates a no match response
["--closematch--"]	Simulates a close match response
["--notapplicable--"]	Simulates a not applicable response

API

Accounts

EUR payments

Reporting

Verification of Payee