What is an IBAN, or International Bank Account Number?

An IBAN, or International Bank Account Number, is a standardised way of identifying a bank account across different countries. It is a number that a customer uses to transfer money from one bank to another. The IBAN consists of a country code, a national identification number and an international bank account number. The method is used to prevent errors when sending bank transfers between countries with different currencies.

What does an IBAN look like?

An IBAN number is a crucial part of international money transfer. It looks something like this: XXXXXXXXYYYYYZZZZ, where the letters are placeholders for the digits, each representing an important aspect of the (inter)national remittance process. This format is consistent across all countries, even with different amounts of digit numbers. For example, Norway uses 15 characters, while Liechtenstein uses 21. The maximum number that any country can use is 34.

When you see an IBAN, it's generally formatted like this:

• Country code
• Check digit code
• BBAN (Basic Bank Account Number)
• Bank identifier code
• Account number

To provide an example, here is a hypothetical IBAN from a Swedish bank, further divided in the table below.:

SE47 7000 0000 0573 9825 7766

This is an example of a Swedish IBAN. The first two digits are the country code, SE. The routing destination and account number combination are validated by the check digits code, 47. The bank identifier is 700 and the account number is 0 0000 0573 9825 7766.

How do you get an IBAN?

Have you ever wondered how to get an IBAN? You can request an International Bank Account Number (IBAN) if you are a customer of Intergiro. If you're not a customer yet, apply for your own IBAN now at intergiro.com.