What is an IBAN number?
How to transfer money safely and quickly to the European recipient? How be sure that the recipient is guaranteed to receive the money you send? You will need to know your IBAN number. But what is it and how to get an IBAN number? Answers to these and other questions you will get from this article.
What is IBAN number?
The IBAN number is a bank account number for international transfers, which has been used in many countries of the European Union since 2007. This number is the standard on which banks process international payments.
Before the IBAN numbers were introduced, each countries of the world used a different bank account format, due to which very often errors were made in international payments. Thanks to the IBAN program the number of these errors is now reduced to a minimum. Now it is much easier to make transfers from one country to another, and banks spend much less time to make and process payments.
Countries that use IBAN in financial transactions:
- Albania (AL)
- Andorra (AD)
- Austria (AT)
- Azerbaijan (AZ)
- Bahrain (BH)
- Belgium (BE)
- Bosnia and Herzegovina (BA)
- Bulgaria (BG)
- Costa Rica (CR)
- Croatia (HR)
- Republic of Cyprus (CY)
- Czech Republic (CZ)
- Denmark (DK)
- Dominican Republic (DO)
- Estonia (EE)
- Faroe Islands (FO)
- Finland (FI)
- France (FR)
- Georgia (GE)
- Germany (DE)
- Gibraltar (GI)
- Greece (GR)
- Greenland (GL)
- Guatemala (GT)
- Hungary (HU)
- Iceland (IS)
- Ireland (IE)
- Israel (IL)
- Italy (IT)
- Jordan (JO)
- Kazakhstan (KZ)
- Kuwait (KW)
- Latvia (LV)
- Lebanon (LB)
- Liechtenstein (LI)
- Lithuania (LT)
- Luxembourg (LU)
- Republic of Macedonia (MK)
- Malta (MT)
- Mauritania (MR)
- Mauritius (MU)
- Monaco (MC)
- Moldova (MD)
- Morocco (MA)
- Montenegro (ME)
- Netherlands (NL)
- Norway (NO)
- Pakistan (PK)
- Palestine (PS)
- Poland (PL)
- Portugal (PT)
- Qatar (QA)
- Romania (RO)
- San Marino (SM)
- Saudi Arabia (SA)
- Serbia (RS)
- Slovakia (SK)
- Slovenia (SI)
- Spain (ES)
- Sweden (SE)
- Switzerland (CH)
- Tunisia (TN)
- Turkey (TR)
- Ukraine (UA)
- United Arab Emirates (AE)
- United Kingdom (GB)
- Virgin Islands (VG)
What does the IBAN number look like?
If you see the IBAN number for the first time, you may get confused in 34 characters consisting of letters and numbers. In fact, each of them has its own important meaning.
Note right away that there doesn’t have to be 34 characters, because each side uses its own number of characters. For example, in Norway, the IBAN number consists of only 15 characters.
The first two characters of the IBAN number means the country code. Immediately after them are two control digits. Thanks to these digits, you can quickly check the account number, as well as where the money is sent.
The next digits are the code of the bank that opened the account. Behind them there is the branch code and at the very end there is the account number.
To make it clear for you, let’s look at the example of the UK IBAN number:
Where to get IBAN number?
Now you know what the IBAN number is and what parts it consists of. Now you need to understand where you can get this number. In fact, there is nothing complicated about it. There are several ways to get an IBAN number to perform the necessary operations.
First, you can find the IBAN number by looking at the bank statement. You can also call the bank branch where you opened the account by asking the manager for this number. The following method is optimal for those who do not like to call anywhere and are used to solving problems quickly. We are talking about online banking. After all, what can be easier than to enter your login and password, and see the necessary IBAN number in the system.
Another way is to create an IBAN number by yourself. To do this, you only need to use a special IBAN calculator, which is certainly already available on the website of the bank servicing you.
However, how to be in a situation if you are not sure that your IBAN number is correct? There is nothing simpler than checking this number on a special website. It is done quickly and easily, this service is absolutely free. Simply enter your existing IBAN number in the corresponding line. If you have written it with errors, the system will point you to these errors, and also informs you that the specified IBAN number is inactive.
You can get an IBAN number at our service in just 2 minutes. Evaluate how easy it is! Now the question “What is my iban number?” will not cause you any difficulties.
The difference between IBAN and SWIFT
The main difference between IBAN number and SWIFT code is that thanks to SWIFT code you can identify only the bank in which the account is opened. In the case of IBAN numbers you can understand not only the bank in which the account was opened, but also to get information about the specific account number opened in this bank. Thus, the IBAN number gives us much more information than the SWIFT code. The advantage of the SWIFT code is a significant amount of financial information, which is necessary for banks, which it contains. It contains the amount of debit and credit of the client, the status of the account, as well as information on a specific transfer of funds.
Thanks to the IBAN number three important functions are performed:
- The banks have the possibility to check in detail all the account details in order to make sure that the money will be sent to its destination.
- With this number, banks can find out in a few seconds which country the money is going to.
- The ability to determine the exact account number of the recipient, as well as the country and other data. This increases the accuracy of sending funds, it ceases to be like a lottery.
Trying to get to the heart of the matter, you will understand that the IBAN number – it is not complicated. It is much more difficult to find a company that will provide your customers with access to all existing and most popular payment methods. However, you can solve this issue very quickly by contacting our company. We work even with high-risk firms, providing more than 350 payment methods and fast verification.
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