Instant Payment Regulation

Instant Payments in the EU: Key Implementation Challenges Revealed

Dr. Thomas Stuht

Senior Product-Manager

02/26/2025
Reading time 2 minutes

Key Takeaways

25% of European banks missed the initial IPR deadline in January 2025.
The next milestone is full active reachability and VOP integration by October 2025.
Survey results reveal the biggest hurdles: VOP integration, debulking, IP limit control, and system upgrades.

In less than seven months, the next major deadline of the EU Instant Payments Regulation (IPR) will arrive. Since January 2025, passive reachability has been mandatory for all payment service providers (PSPs), yet 25% of institutions failed to meet that deadline.

As of October 2025, banks must ensure active reachability across all access channels. This also includes obligations around Verification of Payee (VOP), bulk transaction processing, and instant payments (IP) limit management.

To assess the market’s readiness, we conducted a two-month LinkedIn pulse survey in early 2025. Here's what payments professionals had to say.

Status of Verification of Payee (VOP) readiness

Results indicate that 63% of respondents are progressing well with VOP integration. However:

25% have not yet selected a VOP provider.
3% express concerns about data protection, especially when processing sensitive information (e.g. amount, purpose) alongside IBAN and name.

While no respondents reported technical onboarding problems, those who haven’t yet chosen a VOP service could face integration risks closer to the deadline.

Biggest VOP integration challenges

Two challenges stand out:

Debulking of transaction files
- 36% cited issues splitting bulk transactions into individual payments and aggregating VOP results.
- This so-called “VOP debulking” process remains a stumbling block.
EBICS/SDC integration
- Another 36% mentioned challenges adapting traditional file-based channels.
- This reflects ongoing uncertainty around technical specifications.

Additional difficulties include:
• 20%: integration of submission channels
• 7%: result reporting to ordering parties (viewed as less critical)

Challenges in IP limit management

Our survey shows that IP limit control remains complex and poorly standardised:

50% see key obstacles in process and system integration.
25% cite the lack of a unified solution.
13% are concerned about fraud risks with uncapped IP limits.
Only 13% report smooth implementation.

The topic receives less attention in the market compared to VOP – yet it requires urgent focus.

Top IPR go-live challenges: summary

When asked to identify the greatest challenge overall, the results were clear:

56%: full integration of internal systems
22%: VOP implementation
22%: IP limit controls

These results underscore the technical, operational, and regulatory complexity involved in achieving full IPR compliance by October 2025.

Notably, no respondents cited issues with fee reporting. This may suggest that this requirement is either clearly defined or perceived as lower priority.