On October 9, 2025, VOP went live in the Eurozone, with the non-Eurozone countries to follow in July 2027.
Although an overall success, recent data from the European Payments Council suggests that a significant share of VOP participants are experiencing issues related to discoverability of other participants, which leads to failed VOP checks and a degraded customer experience.
Impact of BIC errors
According to the latest EPC data, published by the EPC in May 2026 and subsequently confirmed in the RVM MSG call in August 2026, the average industry non-reachability rate is 1.63%, and 30% of PSPs operate in the 2–3% error range, which can present a significant risk for high-volume PSPs.
Generally, non-reachability occurs when the BIC resolved from an IBAN is not found in the EDS, or when an incorrect BIC is returned. Some of the root causes for this include:
- Incorrect derivation logic
- Outdated source data
- Routing BICs used for EDS lookup instead of account holding BICs
- PSP not present in EDS
Without an accurate BIC resolution, the request either ends up sent to the wrong institution or fails to be sent at all – ergo, the payment cannot be verified, could be flagged/rejected, and the customer’s experience ends in frustration.
How we tackle this
At Banfico, we built a solution that automatically derives the account holding BIC for all EU IBANs with very high accuracy, thus avoiding potential errors and improving user experience at the same time.
Our data shows clients using Banfico’s IBAN-to-BIC solution experience an error rate of 0.13% for this type of issue. As such, the discoverability failure rate is 92% lower than the industry average.
According to our analysis of 1.2 million unique IBANs, Banfico’s solution results in 99.7% correct BIC derivation for eurozone IBANs. (*)
Resolving IBAN-to-BIC derivation quickly and efficiently is about more than just compliance: it’s an operational advantage and a way to win your customers’ trust and loyalty.
Banfico can help with this: our IBAN-to-BIC directory solution can be accessed as a standalone service and can be easily integrated into your existing VOP and payment journeys.
Contact us to learn more and schedule a free workshop to see how Banfico’s solution increases VOP reachability.
(*) These industry stats include both Eurozone and non-Eurozone requests, while Banfico takes into account the Eurozone requests that are not discoverable.