The IBAN has been developed by the European Committee for Banking Standards (ECBS) to improve the quality of information exchanged between parties involved in European cross-border payments. The standardised IBAN facilitates the automatic processing of cross-border financial transactions between European countries.

An IBAN contains information relating to the country, bank and branch of the beneficiary as well as the account number itself. It includes all the necessary details for a receiving bank to apply the payment directly to a beneficiary’s bank account without any manual intervention.

When the IBAN is used in conjunction with the Bank Identifier Code (BIC) it will improve the efficiency of cross-border payments with regard to speed and quality.

• Country code: shows in which country the account is maintained
• 2-digit check number: to validate the numerical accuracy of a beneficiary’s IBAN
• Bank code: identifies the account holding bank
• Account number: the national sort code and the existing domestic bank account number

Please remember that IBANs are not replacing existing domestic account numbers and are not for use with national domestic payments.

Payments to be remitted
When the beneficiary receives an IBAN on an invoice, the beneficiary should quote the IBAN in the account number field on the payment instruction to the beneficiary’s bank. The BIC (Bank Identifier Code) of the associated bank should be quoted in the payment instruction.

Payments to be received
If the beneficiary receives payment(s) from Europe, the beneficiary should include his IBAN number on his invoice and requests his ordering party to make payments to his IBAN account number. The beneficiary must also include his BIC on all invoices.