Verification of the beneficiary’s name

Verification of the beneficiary’s name (VOP)

Will my payment be executed?
The verification of the beneficiary’s name helps you spot potential errors, but it does not affect the execution of your payment. Whatever the result of the verification, your payment will still be sent to your bank for processing.

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(*).
More information on: ABBL – The L u xembourg Banker’s Association

(*) 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.
More information on https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/document-library/other/epc-list-sepa-scheme-countries

What will change in MultiLine?

As of October 9th Encode payments
When encoding a credit transfer (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.

View Transaction and Sent Transaction Details
For each beneficiary in the payment, a verification result is shown:
• Exact match: The name and IBAN match, no further action required.

• 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.

Example: IBAN LU280019400644750000 owned by Isabel

Entered name	Result	Possible additional info
Isabel	Match
Isabelle	Close match	The entered name almost matches the name of the beneficiary. (*) Did you mean Isabel?
MultiLine	No match	The entered name does not match the name of the beneficiary. If you proceed, the funds could be sent to a wrong beneficiary.
Isabel	Unable to check	The beneficiary bank does not accept the validation of the payee.

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 a wrong beneficiary.

Uploaded payment files (manual uploads) will also be subject to name verification.
After uploading a payment file, MultiLine 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.

Which payments will be verified?

As of October 9th, all manually encoded payments will be verified, and uploaded SEPA payments files (*) SEPA Direct Debit instructions and non-SEPA uploaded payments files will not be verified.

How does MultiLine know if a counterparty name and account number belong together?
With each payment, the information is verified with a Routing and/or Verification Mechanisms provider, which is an intermediary providing VOP services between SEPA banks.
More information on: European Payments Council

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 verify the account number provided and provide the full name to which this account is registered at their bank. Update the counterparty accordingly.
Always contact your beneficiary using a trusted channel

Why I don’t have any VoP results?

Beneficiary verification is not always performed. Whether a beneficiary name is checked depends, for example, on the payment type, the beneficiary service provider, or the configuration of the Opt-Out setting for your bank account.

In practice, name verification may not occur in scenarios such as:
• The beneficiary bank does not support VoP (Beneficiary Name Verification).
• The payment is not a SEPA credit transfer.
• The bank has configured the Opt-Out option for your account.

The absence of beneficiary name verification does not guarantee that the payment will reach the intended recipient. Always verify the recipient details or invoicing information directly.

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 MultiLine, you can only update the beneficiaries in the source application and create a new file.

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 4 minutes
	1001-10.000	Up to 15 minutes
	10.001 – 100.000	Up to 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 the responsibility that the funds could be sent to a 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
Note that you can still send the payment even if it’s not a match.

Can I opt out of verification of the beneficiary’s name?
For uploaded files containing more than one payment, you can choose to disable this verification. For that you need to contact your ordering account bank.
The signer will have to accept the risk that the funds could be sent to a wrong beneficiary or can choose to run the name check afterwards from within the individual transaction group details.

Can I already prepare my counterparties today?
Partially:
Verification of Payee provides an ad-hoc response (match or close/no match) when creating a payment instruction. It is not intended for bulk updating of your counterparties.
However, you can already manually verify whether the beneficiary’s name encoded in your ERP or MultiLine matches the one provided on past invoices.

For legal entities in Luxembourg, both registered names at their bank and legal names, abbreviations, and trade names registered in the Luxembourg Business Register will be considered.

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
number. Always confirm such requests directly with your counterparty via a trusted
channel. If you suspect a fraudulent attempt to alter counterparty information, promptly notify
your bank or MultiLine.

I know the counterparty by a different name and would like to keep that name for easy searching.
In MultiLine, 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 only. The alias can still contain your preferred name.