Many of the belongings that we have pass through our lives as absolute strangers who only fulfill a mission. It may be, for example, the case of our bank accounts, with which we manage our money and about which we do not know as many things as we may think at first.
One of the most striking aspects of checking accounts are their long numbers. They often play tricks on us when making a bank transfer and we hardly know people who know them by heart. But also, what are they obeying? Why are those numbers and not others? Is your disposition due to any reason?
The Bank of Spain what is the meaning of the numbers that make up the current accounts, the already hackneyed IBAN that corresponds to the acronym in English of the International Bank Account Code. A succession of two letters and 22 consecutive numbers that are not arranged, far from it, randomly.
-The first two spaces of this IBAN are the two letters that it has and are in charge of determining the country in which the bank account resides. That is why in Spain these two letters are very suggestive: ES. The letters are accompanied by a control digit of two numbers and this set, in the words of the Bank of Spain, has the objective of “validating the entire IBAN”.
-Then a block of four digits appears. These are those that correspond to the bank that owns the user’s bank account. This code is assigned by the Bank of Spain and is intended to identify that bank. In fact, everyone who has an account at the same bank will have at least the same four digits.
-Behind them is a new block of four digits, which on this occasion are those that refer to the office or branch of the bank in which the user registered their bank account. These four numbers are followed by a new two-digit control code.
-Finally, there is the account number, that ten-digit code that is often a source of confusion, since it is usually identified with the full account number.
The importance of control codes
As we have seen before, control codes appear twice in the IBAN of a bank account: one is linked to the two letters that reflect the country of the account and the other just before the ten digits of the account number, to the end of IBAN. But do they have any other purpose?
The Bank of Spain explains the importance of these control codes, which is not exactly scarce: “They serve to detect cases in which any of the characters has been omitted, duplicated or written by mistake.” Something that is very useful when a person makes a transfer and makes a mistake when writing the 24 characters, for example.
How are the accounts in other countries
As explained by the Bank of Spain, there are differences between countries because the regulations allow an IBAN code to be made up of a total of up to 34 alphanumeric characters. That is why different configurations can be given depending on each country as long as they adhere to the allowed parameters.
Thus, while in France the IBAN has 27 figures, in Germany it has even less than in our country, 22. All are equally valid.