Fee payments and refunds

Cover of publication about fees

You can pay your patent fees to the EPO by:

  • deposit account held with the EPO
  • credit card, or
  • bank transfer

Fee payments to the EPO must be made in EUR. For more information, please refer to

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About debit orders

Deposit accounts are debited on the basis of an electronic debit order signed by the account holder or authorised representative.

The debit order may be

  • for individual fees for one or more applications, i.e. a single or a batch debit order, or
  • an automatic debit order for a specific European or international patent application, authorising the EPO to debit fees automatically as the proceedings progress

  • Replenishment

Payments to replenish deposit accounts must be made into the EPO's bank account.

    Nr. 3 338 800 00 (BLZ 700 800 00)
    IBAN DE20 7008 0000 0333 8800 00
    BIC* DRESDEFF700
    Commerzbank AG
    Leopoldstrasse 230
    80807 Munich, Germany.

*Please use COBADEFFXXX if DRESDEFF700 is not recognised.

The payment must include the following information in the reference field of the bank transfer: "replenishment" (or "repl" for short) or "deposit", followed by the eight-digit number (starting with 28) of the EPO deposit account concerned.

Refunds via deposit account

Applicants/professional representatives can file refund instructions pertaining to a given application requesting that refunds be credited to a deposit account held with the EPO. Refund instructions should be filed using Online Filing, Online Filing 2.0 or ePCT-Filing.


About credit card payment

You can pay patent fees by credit card in Central Fee Payment. This is a secure and flexible way of making instant fee payments.

Refunds of payment by credit card

Please note that refunds to credit card accounts are not possible.


About bank transfers

You can prepare your bank transfer by submitting an order online in Central Fee Payment. This allows you to pay fees for multiple applications with a single transfer. You will get a unique payment reference per order submitted.

Please then quote this reference when making the bank transfer.

Once we have received your bank transfer, payment confirmation will be available to download in the service.

Refunds to a bank account

If you have not filed any instructions indicating a deposit account to be credited in the event of a refund for your patent application, you can claim pending refunds in Central Fee Payment and request that they be credited to a bank account of your choice.

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