What is an IBAN?
IBAN is an acronym which stands for International Bank Account Number. It is a standard way of uniquely identifying an account for the purpose of improving the efficiency and speed of cross border European Union payments.
The length of an IBAN can be up to 28 digits starting with 2 letter country code, specific to each country.
When a cross-border payment is made in Europe, an IBAN is used to identify the account to which the payment should be made and is always used in conjunction with a SWIFT Bank Identifier Code (BIC).
An IBAN is NOT a new bank account number. It is a way of representing national account numbers in an internationally recognised format to ensure accurate and simple routing of cross border Euro payments.
To make a payment from outside the EU (for example from the USA) ) to a beneficiary who has quoted an IBAN, always enter that IBAN in the account number field of the payment form.
The core IBAN elements are made up of the following to form a single, one length format:
Country code (CC).
Check digit (CD).
National Bank Code (NBC)
Bank Account Number (BAN)
There are other optional sections to IBANs.
What does an IBAN look like?
The IBAN is a series of alphanumeric characters that uniquely identifies an account held at a bank. IBAN always starts with 2 letter country code.
Example: DE89 3704 0044 0532 0130