International Bank Account Codes

Rules and formats of international account codes.

International account codes are used to identify account numbers from countries other than the issuer of the code. These account numbers arise from the need to find a common account number identification system for everyone. Normally these codes add several characters that allow to uniquely identify a branch of an entity in a specific country.

Today it is common to use two different international account numbers:

• SWIFT / BIC code
• IBAN code

The SWIFT account code is used worldwide, and the IBAN account code is used primarily for operations within the European Union.

SWIFT Code / BIC (Bank Identification Code)

In 1973 banks communicated via Telex, in a not very secure way, with a minimum of standards and without automation. For this reason, The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications was born, a Belgian institution created with the aim of creating a system for the transmission of secure messages on international financial transactions and which had the support of 239 banks in 15 countries.

SWIFT currently has 7,600 members located in 200 countries, with a volume of 9 million messages per day.

One of the standards created by this institution is the BIC code (Bank Identification Code), which allows an entity and branch to be univocally identified as we will see below (it does not validate the account number).

SWIFT / BIC account numbers are defined by the ISO 9362 standard. The codes can have a length of 11 or 8 characters whose content is specified below:

4 characters: Bank Code

2 characters: ISO country code

2 characters: town

3 characters: branch

– If a code has 8 characters, the Bank Code, Country Code and locality will appear, and the transfer will be received by the main office of that locality.

– If a code has 11 characters, all the fields specified above will appear, directing the transfer to a specific branch.

IBAN code (International Bank account Number)

In accordance with regulation 2560/2001 of the European Parliament and the Council of Europe, concerning international payments in Euro currency, on July 1, 2003, the Member States of the European Union created a common system to identify the number of account of the branches of the member states.

The IBAN number is an international account number that allows the precise identification of the beneficiary of the transaction, and therefore allows payments to be made in an automated manner.

The IBAN code is made up of an alphanumeric sequence of characters, with a fixed size that depends on the country, and a maximum of 34 characters.

There are two different formats of IBAN codes, the paper format, and the digital format.

The difference between the two is simply that in the paper version, the IBAN codes are grouped in groups of four characters, while in the digital version, they are without spaces.

IBAN codes are defined by the ISO 13616:1997 standard in accordance with the following rules:

2 characters: Country codes, following the ISO format

2 characters: Check digit

Up to 30 characters (depending on the country): account number

The number of characters that each account number will have is defined independently by each central bank of each country and is currently as follows:

PaisLonguitudEjemplos en papel Andorra24AD12 0001 2030 2003 5910 0100 Austria20AT61 1904 3002 3457 3201 Bélgica16BE68 5390 0754 7034 Chipre28CY17 0020 0128 0000 0012 0052 7600 República Checa24CZ65 0800 0000 1920 0014 5399 Dinamarca18DK50 0040 0440 1162 43 Estonia20EE38 2200 2210 2014 5685 Finlandia18FI21 1234 5600 0007 85 Francia27 FR14 2004 1010 0505 0001 3M02 606 Alemania22DE89 3704 0044 0532 0130 00 Gibraltar23GI75 NWBK 0000 0000 7099 453 Grecia27 GR16 0110 1250 0000 0001 2300 695 Hungría28 HU42 1177 3016 1111 1018 0000 0000 Islandia26 IS14 0159 2600 7654 5510 7303 39 Irlanda22 IE29 AIBK 9311 5212 3456 78 Italia27 IT60 X054 2811 1010 0000 0123 456 Latvia21 LV80 BANK 0000 4351 9500 1 Lituania20LT12 1000 0111 0100 1000 Luxemburgo20LU28 0019 4006 4475 0000 Países Bajos18 NL91 ABNA 0417 1643 00 Noruega15 NO93 8601 1117 947 Polonia28 PL27 1140 2004 0000 3002 0135 5387 Portugal25 PT50 0002 0123 1234 5678 9015 4 Slovak Republic24 SK31 1200 0000 1987 4263 7541 Slovenia19SI56 1910 0000 0123 438 Spain24 ES80 2310 0001 1800 0001 2345 Sweden24 SE35 5000 0000 0549 1000 0003 Switzerland21 CH39 0070 0115 2018 4917 3 United Kingdom22 GB29 NWBK 6016 1331 9268 19

To validate the IBAN code, it will be necessary to check for each case the length of the string for the given country, the enumerated codes corresponding to the country, and the common check digit for all countries.