What is IBAN?

IBAN is the International Bank Account Number. At first it was accepted by the European Committee for Banking Standards to assist in payments. Afterwards it was approved as an international standard under ISO 13616:1997 and now it is adopted worldwide under ISO 13616:2007.

What IBAN Consists of?

The IBAN contains:

• ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code
• Two check digits and
• The BBAN.

The BBAN is Basic Bank Account Number which can be up to thirty characters. BBAN is domestic bank account number and includes routing information. The number of characters in BBAN is decided by national banking community of every country. Also it is constant for each country.

IBAN Representation

While conveying electronically, the IBAN does not consist any space. But when it is written on paper, it is divided in groups of four characters. The groups are split by single space. And the length of last group is not constant.

At present the IBAN registry is at SWIFT. The use of IBAN reduces the risk of transcription faults.