Belgian banks outperform Dutch banks on UX and Process Excellence

When the Instant Payments Regulation (IPR) came into force on the 9th of October 2025, together with the updated SCT Inst Rulebook introduced four days earlier, European banks faced a fundamental shift. Instant payments became mandatory for institutions in scope of the IPR, and Verification of Payee (VOP) became a compulsory security measure across the SEPA zone. With these obligations, regulators aimed to reduce fraud and misdirected payments, strengthen customer trust in digital transactions and position instant payments as an accessible standard service.

To assess how these requirements have reshaped the customer journey, Projective Group revisited its earlier research conducted in April 2025. The study again examined both successful (‘happy’) and failed (‘non-happy’) instant payment flows, this time across sixteen leading retail banks spanning Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and the United Kingdom.