The second major deadline of the EU Instant Payments Regulation took effect on October 9, 2025, requiring all eurozone credit institutions to offer instant payment sending capability. The January 2025 deadline had only required receiving.
What Changed
Three obligations became mandatory simultaneously. First, every PSP offering standard SEPA credit transfers must now also offer instant sending - not as a premium service but as a baseline capability. Second, Verification of Payee (VoP) became mandatory, requiring PSPs to match payee name to IBAN before executing transfers. Third, instant payment charges must not exceed those for standard credit transfers - eliminating the surcharges that many banks had applied.
Compliance Status
EBA Clearing reported that close to 50 RT1 and STEP2 participants went live with VoP across 14 countries on October 9. The ECB confirmed that payment institutions and electronic money institutions gained direct TARGET access simultaneously, breaking the correspondent banking dependency for licensed non-bank PSPs.
What This Means
Instant payments are no longer optional in the eurozone. The combination of mandatory sending, free-to-consumer pricing, and VoP creates a structural shift toward instant-by-default. Banks that treated instant payments as a premium add-on must now absorb the processing costs. For payment professionals, routing decisions should now assume instant availability across the eurozone.