The International Bank Account Number (IBAN) is an internationally agreed means of identifying bank accounts across national borders with a reduced risk of propagating transcription errors. It was originally adopted by the European Committee for Banking Standards (ECBS), and later adopted as an international standard under ISO 13616:1997. The current standard is ISO 13616:2007, which indicates SWIFT as the formal registrar. Initially developed to facilitate payments within the European Union, it has now also been implemented by most European countries and many other countries, especially in the Middle East and in the Caribbean.
The IBAN consists of up to 34 alphanumeric characters: first the two-letter ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code, then two check digits, and finally a country-specific Basic Bank Account Number (BBAN). The check digits enable a sanity check of the bank account number to confirm its integrity even before submitting a transaction. The BBAN format is decided by each national banking community under the restriction that it must be of a fixed length of case-insensitive alphanumeric characters. It includes the domestic bank account number, branch identifier, and potential routing information.
Read more about International Bank Account Number: Background, Features, Adoption
Famous quotes containing the words bank, account and/or number:
“on a May morwening upon Malverne hilles
Me befel a ferly, of fairye me thoughte;
I was wery ofwandred and wente me to reste
Under a brod bank by a bournes side;
And as I lay and lenede and lookede on the watres,
I slomerede into a sleeping, it swyede so merye.”
—William Langland (1330–1400)
“Placing too much importance on where a child goes rather than what he does there . . . doesn’t take into account the child’s needs or individuality, and this is true in college selection as well as kindergarten.”
—Norman Giddan (20th century)
“The rising power of the United States in world affairs ... requires, not a more compliant press, but a relentless barrage of facts and criticism.... Our job in this age, as I see it, is not to serve as cheerleaders for our side in the present world struggle but to help the largest possible number of people to see the realities of the changing and convulsive world in which American policy must operate.”
—James Reston (b. 1909)