International Bank Account Number

IBAN number in a bank extract (fiction) of a British bank

The International Bank Account Number (in English, International Bank Account Number or IBAN) is an alphanumeric code that identifies a certain bank account in a financial institution anywhere in the world (if the country adheres to the IBAN system). In other words, each account corresponds to a unique IBAN by which the country, the entity, the office and the account are identified. It was originally adopted by the European Committee for Banking Standards (ECBS) under a standard (EBS204 v3) and later as an international standard under ISO 13616:1997. The current standard is ISO 13616:2007, which indicates that the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication is the official registrar.

The purpose of the IBAN is to facilitate the automatic processing of cross-border payments and collections. The standard ensures correct data transmission and reduces the chances of manual intervention. Therefore, it helps to avoid the costs and delays associated with the incorrect or insufficient transmission of data relating to bank accounts.

Jurisdictions that have introduced the IBAN

Because both the IBAN and the BIC (ISO 9362) facilitate international money transfer, helping to make it more efficient, an increasing number of countries are adopting their use. In Spain, the IBAN code definitively replaced the Customer Account Code (CCC) on February 1, 2014. By March 2020, 83 jurisdictions have implemented it or are close to doing so. The numbers are separated by spaces every four characters for a better reading, however, the systems omit them and these countries can be divided into two groups:

Jurisdictions where the use of IBAN is mandatory

Jurisdictions where the use of IBAN is recommended

As of March 2020, there are 24 jurisdictions where the use of the IBAN has been recommended: Albania, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Brazil, Vatican City State, Guatemala, Iraq, Iran, Virgin Islands, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Mauritius, Mauritania, Pakistan, Dominican Republic, Saint Lucia, Sao Tome and Principe, Serbia, Seychelles, East Timor and Ukraine.

Characters

The IBAN consists of a maximum of 34 alphanumeric characters. The first two are alphabetic and identify the country. The next two are check digits and constitute the validation element of the entire IBAN. The rest are the account number, which, in most cases, also identifies the entity and the branch.

In Spain

In the Spanish case, there are the first four, made up of the elements explained in the previous paragraph, and then followed by the 20 numerical characters corresponding to the Customer Account Code (that is, the IBAN consists of a total of 24 characters)). The first two letters ("ES" in the case of Spain) correspond to the country of origin of the account.

The following example shows a comparison between the customer account code (CCC) and the IBAN code of the same account.

• Code Account Customer: 2077 0024 00 3102575766
• IBAN Code:
  • Paper format: IBAN ES76 2077 0024 0031 0257 5766
  • Electronic format: ES7620770024003102575766

In the EU

The IBAN in the different countries of the European Union is made up as follows: