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Instant Payments Regulation (IPR)

The Instant Payments Regulation ensures the widespread availability of instant payments in Europe. Payments account providers are required to offer instant payments at no extra cost and with a cross-border IBAN name check.

Since October 2025, the Instant Payments Regulation (IPR) has required banks that offer regular transfers in euros between payments accounts to also offer instant payments to all customers at the same rate.

With the IPR, instant payments in euros will be fully available to all citizens, businesses, and institutions that hold a payments account with a bank in euro countries from the end of 2025.

From mid-2027, instant payments will also be fully available in European non-euro countries and at non-bank payment account providers throughout Europe.

An instant payment is an account-to-account transfer in which the amount is credited to the recipient’s account within seconds, regardless of the time of day, every day of the year, including Sundays and public holidays. This offers interesting advantages over traditional transfers, which are processed a few times per working day during fixed processing times.

Read more about how instant payments work.

In the Netherlands, instant payments have been widely available since 2019, six years before the introduction of EU legislation.

Text of the Instant Payment Regulation

The core obligations of the IPR are included in the SEPA Regulation, which incorporates Articles 5a to 5d of the IPR. The most important provisions of these new articles are summarized below, including the corresponding implementation timelines:

5a. Payment service providers offering traditional European transfers in euros to payment service users within or outside the eurozone must also offer instant payments in euros. Implementation timeline:

  • Banks within the eurozone must be able to receive instant payments from January 2025 and send them from October 2025.
  • Payment institutions and electronic money institutions within the eurozone must be able to receive and send instant payments from April 9, 2027.

5b. The fees for instant payments in euros may not exceed those for traditional European credit transfers (SCTs). Implementation timeline:

  • Payment service providers within the eurozone must comply with this requirement from January 2025.

5c. Payment service providers must offer a Verification of Payee service to their payment account holders (private and business) free of charge when making transfers, both for instant payments and for traditional European transfers. Timeline for implementation:

  • Payment service providers within the eurozone must offer a Verification of Payee service since October 2025.

5d. Providers of instant payments in euros must follow a harmonized sanctions screening procedure, shifting from transaction screening to account holder screening. Timeline for implementation:

  • Payment service providers within the eurozone must comply with this since January 2025.

See also:

Verification of Payee

With the mandatory introduction of instant payments, the obligation to verify the name of the beneficiary account holder will also come into force. This verification will therefore also be mandatory for traditional credit transfers (SCT). The verification of the payee’s name, known as Verification of Payee (VoP), must be offered by the payer’s PSP prior to authorizing the payment order. The recipient’s PSP checks the name associated with the IBAN and sends the result back to the payer’s PSP. The IPR defines four possible responses to the VOP request:

  • Good; the name entered matches the name associated with the specified IBAN
  • Not good; the name entered does not match the name associated with the specified IBAN
  • Almost correct; the name entered largely matches the name associated with the specified IBAN. In that case, the correct name is displayed. The payer can then copy the correct name into the payment order.
  • Not possible; inform the payer that it is not possible to check the name.

If the response is ‘Good’, the payment can be completed. For all other responses, the payer must be informed that if the payment is still processed with the name originally provided, this may result in a payment being made to a beneficiary other than the intended one. PSPs determine the wording of the responses to their account holders themselves.

The European Payments Council has established a standard for the exchange of VoP requests and responses within SEPA. Participation in this standard is mandatory for all SCT/SCT Inst providers in SEPA.

Reporting obligations for PSPs

The IPR requires payment service providers to report the following information to the competent authorities (AFM and DNB in the Netherlands):

  1. The amount of the costs for credit transfers (SCT) and instant credit transfers (SCT Inst) and the costs for payments accounts, to be reported to the AFM.
  2. The proportion of rejections as a result of the sanctions screening under Article 5d, calculated separately for domestic and cross-border payment transactions, to be reported to DNB.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) is responsible for the Implementation Technical Standards (ITS) with a reporting methodology, instructions, and templates. On February 4, 2025, the EBA published the draft of the final ITS, including the templates with instructions. This is several months later than planned.

Due to the delayed publication, the EBA proposes to postpone the deadline for the first reporting obligations by 12 months, to April 9, 2026.

Direct access to payment systems for payment and electronic money institutions

The IPR also makes amendments to the Settlement Finality Directive (SFD), allowing payment and electronic money institutions to access payment systems directly. This includes, for example, the Eurosystem’s TARGET payment system, which also covers TIPS.

The European Central Bank communicated on this in January 2025 and describes the conditions that a payment or electronic money institution must meet in order to gain access.