Deep dive into the VOP Portal
During the Verification of Payee User Group #3, which took place in March, the LUXHUB team announced the upcoming VOP Portal, sharing first details and presenting the main features to the members of the user group. Today, with the VOP deadline approaching – with about 6 months left for Payment Service Providers –, we are officially introducing it to all, as well as the future availability of an EPC-compliant API sandbox.
The main features of the VOP Portal
The VOP Portal – which we called Alethia, meaning “spirit of truth”, “truthfulness” and “sincerity” in Ancient Greek in reference to the primary intention and role of VOP in fraud fighting and helping PSUs verify the recipient of the payment – developed by the LUXHUB team contains three main features, destined to different profiles:
- VOP query: the ability to make direct VOP checks through GUI (Graphical User Interface – single and bulk), and the possibility to check past checks results. This feature is destined to operations and account management teams, as they handle “manual” payment orders, and will be particularly useful when the underlying credit transfer is initiated via asynchronous channels such as phone or email.
- VOP usage reporting: detailed reports for past periods of time as well as aggregated KPI dashboards for incoming and outgoing VOP requests (number, average, request time, etc.), and access list to all VOP scheme participants with services’ details. Aimed at (VOP) Project Managers, and also Compliance and Operations Management teams.
- Accounts data provision monitoring: possibility to monitor the activity of data retrieval to respond to incoming VOP requests whether they use regular file updates (alternative 1) or a dedicated API (alternative 2). This feature is especially useful for IT and BI teams.
Sandboxes: leveraging a mock VOP Scheme API
A generic EPC VOP Scheme API has been made available in the LUXHUB Marketplace. It consists in the same API that will be, in the future, exposed on behalf of LUXHUB clients to all EPC VOP Scheme participants, with mock data. To access this API, following the actual model required in the EPC VOP Scheme, the PSP will need to present a valid QWAC PSD2 Certificate (though, for SBX environment, test certificates can be provided by LUXHUB if needed).
By already marking this API available (with static data) before the actual ART (API Reference Tool) pilot phase that is to start on April 28th with a limited number of PSPs and RVMs, LUXHUB aims at providing PSPs with an overview of the API technical specifications as well as a concrete idea of what other PSPs and RVMs would be consuming in order to initiate their requests.
The EPC decided to introduce the ART test and self-certification platform to mitigate interoperability risks among VOP scheme participants ahead of the go live. As explained on its website, “the EPC will mandate all RVMs to perform a successful self-certification on the ART platform; PSPs not using RVMs will be strongly recommended to do so. For this reason, ART will be made available to the RVM first and to PSPs not using RVMs in a second stage”. The call for candidates was just issued on April 31st. LUXHUB will perform the EPC self-certification steps as soon as possible.
And, from October 2025, the same requesting API will be exposed by LUXHUB on behalf of each of its clients.