As we’re nearing the end of 2025, we must admit that it basically became the year SEPA Instant stopped being optional and turned to a new form of normal in the payment industry.
What actually changed in 2025 for SEPA payments?
2025 is the year instant SEPA stopped being a “nice extra” and effectively became part of the basic plumbing of the euro payments system.
- Instant SEPA became mandatory for most banks
Banks in the euro area that already offered standard SEPA Credit Transfers (SCT) are now required to also support SEPA Instant Credit Transfers (SCT Inst). In practice, this means that if your bank lets you send a traditional SEPA transfer, it must also be technically able to send and receive instant ones, 24/7/365. - No more luxury pricing for instant transfers
Until 2025, many banks treated instant SEPA as a premium feature and charged extra – sometimes several euros per transfer. New rules now cap the pricing: instant payments must be priced similarly to standard SEPA transfers. For most retail users this means either free or a very small fee. As soon as the pricing barrier dropped, usage naturally started to climb. - 24/7 reachability became the norm
A critical part of an instant scheme is reachability: it’s useless if your bank is instant but your counterparty’s bank is not. In 2025, almost all large EU banks became reachable on the SEPA Instant rail, meaning money can move in seconds between institutions in different countries, at any time of day.
Result:
Instant SEPA has shifted from being a niche service offered by innovative banks and fintechs to a mainstream payment rail. The share of instant transfers in the overall SEPA mix is now clearly growing month after month, driven by mandatory reachability and fair pricing.
Where SEPA Instant stands at the end of 2025
By the end of 2025, the situation can be summarized as follows:
- Around a quarter of SEPA Credit Transfers are instant
Roughly 25% of all SEPA credit transfers are already executed as instant payments. This share is uneven across countries and banks – some are close to 100% instant by default, others still push traditional transfers – but the trend is clearly upwards. - Technical limits are no longer a real constraint
Earlier versions of the scheme had relatively low maximum amounts per transaction, which limited usage to retail payments and smaller B2B transactions. These caps have been progressively increased. Today, the scheme supports very high transaction values, making it suitable not only for consumer payments but also for large corporate transactions, treasury operations, and high-value B2B flows.
In other words, the infrastructure is ready and robust. The pipes exist, they have sufficient capacity, and they’re already handling billions of euros with high reliability. The remaining step is mainly behavioural and commercial: making instant the default choice instead of the exception.
Verification of Payee (VoP): the new “name check”
While instant payments were becoming the norm, 2025 was also the year Europe laid the foundations for Verification of Payee (VoP) – often referred to as the “name check”.
- How VoP works in practice
Before you confirm a transfer, your bank checks whether the name you entered for the beneficiary matches the IBAN you are sending money to.- If the name and IBAN match, you get a positive confirmation.
- If they don’t match, the bank warns you on screen – for example: “The name you entered does not correspond to this IBAN”.
- What happened in 2025
Throughout 2025, banks and payment institutions have been building, integrating and testing the VoP mechanism: connecting to centralized or decentralized databases, defining matching rules, and designing the user interface for warnings and confirmations. - What will be visible to users from 2026
From 2026, VoP will start to appear in everyday banking apps and online banking portals. For users, this will:- Reduce misdirected payments caused by typing errors in the IBAN or mixing up beneficiaries.
- Help combat “authorized push payment” fraud, where victims are tricked into sending money to fraudsters who pretend to be legitimate payees (for example, “your bank”, “your energy provider” or “your lawyer”). A mismatch warning will act as a strong red flag.
VoP is therefore the security counterpart to instant payments: if money moves in seconds and is hard to recall, you must also give customers a stronger tool to verify where they are sending it.
What to expect in 2026
Looking ahead to 2026, Christian Caumont from Yowpay.com, a SEPA orchestration platform, expects several major developments as the market matures:
- Instant SEPA heading towards (and beyond) one-third of all transfers
As more institutions complete their integration with SEPA Instant and as banks stop charging extra, the share of instant transfers is likely to move to one-third or more of all SEPA credit transfers. For many institutions, instant simply becomes “how a transfer works”. - Instant as the default, standard SEPA as the fallback
More banks, EMIs and fintechs will make instant the default option in their UI, with regular SEPA used only when instant is technically impossible (for example, if the destination bank is temporarily unreachable). Customers will experience “send now” as the normal way to transfer money, not a special feature. - VoP rolled out at scale
Verification of Payee will be rolled out widely across the EU. The “name/IBAN check” will become a standard step on the payment screen, just like the amount and reference fields today. Over time, users will get used to relying on this check before confirming important payments. - A2A solutions competing seriously with cards
As instant SEPA and VoP mature, a broad range of account-to-account (A2A) payment solutions will gain traction:- Payment links and request-to-pay flows
- QR-code payments at the point of sale or online
- Wallets and merchant-branded payment experiences built directly on bank accounts
These solutions will increasingly compete with cards, especially for online purchases, subscriptions, bill payments, and higher-value transactions, where the economics of A2A are more attractive for merchants.
- Strong growth of SEPA in e-commerce
With instant, low-cost, secure A2A methods, SEPA payment volumes in e-commerce are expected to at least double again in 2026. Merchants will actively promote instant bank payments as an alternative to cards and wallets, driven by lower fees, fewer chargebacks, and immediate settlement.
In simple terms
- 2025 made instant SEPA mandatory, accessible and cheaper. The infrastructure is now in place, and most major banks are reachable instantly, 24/7.
- 2026 will make instant SEPA everyday, unavoidable and safer:
- Instant becomes the default transfer type.
- VoP adds a strong layer of protection against errors and scams.
- A2A solutions built on instant SEPA will capture more and more market share from cards, especially online.
For consumers, this means faster and safer payments.
For merchants and PSPs, it opens the door to a new generation of SEPA-based checkout experiences that combine low cost, instant settlement, and strong fraud protection.
