Where an amount is paid into or transferred to a bank account held by the Office, the date on which the amount of the payment or transfer is actually entered in its account is considered to be the date on which the payment has been made to the Office (Art. 7(1) RFees, formerly Art. 8(1) RFees 1973). Thus, where an appeal fee was mistakenly transferred to a bank account held by the German Patent Office (GPO), neither the date on which the transfer was entered in the GPO's account nor the date on which the order to transfer the amount to the GPO was issued could be taken into account to establish whether a fee due to the EPO had been paid in due time (see T 45/94 and T 1130/98).

Payment via the EPO's credit card fee payment service is deemed to have been made on the date on which the transaction is approved (see OJ 2017, A72 and OJ 2017, A73).