Withoutvirtual IBAN
MultiSafepayNL01 DEUT 0123 4567 89
€ +1,00
Refund TXID 12032103 1023123
Date:Thursday 10th of February
To accountCONSUMER NAMENL 01 ABNA 0123 4567 89
Virtual IBAN: how to reduce disputes by fixing unrecognized payments
This is one of the most common friction points in ecommerce payments, and it's entirely avoidable. At MultiSafepay, improving the customer experience and brand consistency for our merchants is a core priority. Virtual IBAN is one of the most effective tools we offer to achieve that.
A virtual IBAN (VIBAN) is the ideal solution for this problem. In this article, you'll find out what a virtual IBAN is, and the concrete ways it can improve your payment operations and customer experience.
What is a virtual IBAN, exactly?
The clue is in the name. A virtual IBAN is a virtual alternative to a regular IBAN and does not represent a physical bank account. When processing payments, transactions are routed through your payment service provider's (PSP) bank account by default, which means your PSP's name, not yours, can end up on your customer's bank statement.
A virtual IBAN changes that. Rather than being tied to a physical bank account, a VIBAN is a virtual construct that routes incoming funds directly to MultiSafepay's account — while displaying your brand name, instead of ours, on your customer's bank statement.
From the customer's perspective, nothing changes, as they're dealing with a normal bank account. But from a brand recognition standpoint, the difference is significant.
Why does this matter for your business?
Brand confusion doesn't just look unprofessional: it costs you money. Customers who don't recognize a transaction name are more likely to dispute a charge, request a refund, or flood your support team with unnecessary questions. In some cases, an unrecognized billing descriptor is enough to trigger a chargeback — a process that is significantly more costly and time-consuming to manage than a standard refund.
A virtual IBAN keeps your brand visible at every payment touchpoint, reducing confusion and the operational overhead that comes with it.
Beyond brand consistency, virtual IBANs are also fast to activate — entirely in the digital space, with significantly less administrative overhead than opening a traditional bank account. This makes them especially useful for businesses processing payments across multiple European markets.
How MultiSafepay uses virtual IBAN for your business
We use virtual IBANs across three key scenarios, each one is designed to reduce friction for your customers and workload for your team.
Refunds: Eliminate "where's my money?" tickets
Refunds are one of the biggest drivers of unnecessary customer support contact. According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), ecommerce return rates have been rising steadily from 16.9% in 2024 to an estimated 19.3% in 2025. Any confusion around how a refund appears on a bank statement translates directly into support volume.
Through a virtual IBAN, we display "Your name — by MultiSafepay" on the refund transaction, making it immediately recognizable to your customer.
Our client The Little Green Bag implemented virtual IBAN after a spike in sales led to a surge in refund-related tickets:
After we had a significant increase in sales, we noticed our customer operations were getting a lot more questions and tickets about refunds. Mainly due to our clients having trouble locating their refunds in their banking environment. After the implementation of virtual IBAN, these requests stopped completely.
Charissa Jokhoe, Customer Operations Manager, The Little Green Bag
Refunds
Withvirtual IBAN
Your webshop name
NL01 DEUT 0123 4567 89
€ +1,00
Refund TXID 12032103 1023123
Date:Thursday 10th of February
To accountCONSUMER NAMENL 01 ABNA 0123 4567 89
Payment collection: Make recurring payments recognizable
For businesses that use SEPA Direct Debit or merchant-initiated transactions, virtual IBAN ensures your name appears on the customer's bank statement, not an unfamiliar reference they can't place.
This is especially important for subscriptions and recurring billing, where customers are more likely to flag an unrecognized charge as fraud or contact their bank to dispute it. A recognizable name on the statement removes that risk before it becomes a problem.
Matching payments: Take control of bank transfer reconciliation
This use case is particularly relevant for B2B merchants or businesses that handle a high volume of bank transfers. When a customer makes an error during a bank transfer — entering incorrect payment details, for example — the payment can't be automatically matched to the corresponding order.
Normally, you need to contact your PSP to resolve this manually. With virtual IBAN active, you can request to handle unmatched payments directly from your MultiSafepay Control Panel.
A dedicated section lets you review, match, and resolve payments yourself — reducing dependency on our support team and speeding up resolution time for your customers.
This also integrates naturally into your broader reconciliation workflow. If you're looking to streamline and automate how you manage your financial data across channels, our guide to payment reconciliation covers the full picture.
Virtual IBAN: One change. Less confusion. Fewer disputes.
The kind of friction that quietly erodes customer trust often starts with something as small as an unrecognized name on a bank statement. Virtual IBAN solves this at the source: it keeps your brand front and center at every payment touchpoint, streamlines reconciliation, and gives your customers one less reason to doubt you.
As a European payment service provider, MultiSafepay offers virtual IBAN as part of a broader suite of tools built to help merchants operate more efficiently and grow with confidence.
Ready to activate virtual IBAN for your business? Find all the technical details and setup instructions in our documentation.
