IBAN
International Bank Account Number. The universal bank account identifier — pivot of SEPA payments and bank coordinates in any European invoice.
Definition
The IBAN is defined by ISO 13616-1:2020 (the most recent revision). Structure:
- Country code: 2 letters ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 (FR, DE, BE, IT, GB…).
- Check digits: 2 digits computed in mod-97-10 over the rest of the IBAN. Computation: move the first 4 characters to the end of the string, convert letters to digits (A=10, B=11, …, Z=35), treat the result as a decimal integer, verify that the remainder of division by 97 is 1.
- BBAN — Basic Bank Account Number: up to 30 alphanumeric characters, country-dependent. The internal structure (bank code, branch code, account number) is fixed by each national registry.
Total length varies from 15 characters (Norway, NO) to 34
(Saint Lucia). For France, that is 27 characters: FR + 2
check digits + 5 bank digits + 5 branch digits + 11 account characters +
2 RIB key digits. For Germany, 22 characters. For Italy, 27 (with CIN
letter). The mod-97-10 validation guarantees that a bad IBAN is
detected with near-certainty.
In EDI, IBAN mainly appears: in the FII segment of EDIFACT INVOIC, in
the cbc:ID field of UBL PayeeFinancialAccount, in the
DebtorAccount/CreditorAccount of ISO 20022 pacs/pain/camt messages.
Origin
The ECBS (European Committee for Banking Standards) published the IBAN in 1997 to standardise cross-border bank coordinates in Europe. The standard was taken up by ISO in 2007 under ISO 13616. EU Regulation 2560/2001 then 924/2009 made IBAN mandatory for any SEPA credit transfer, which definitively retired national RIBs for EU cross-border transfers. The 2020 revision ISO 13616-1:2020 is the current version.
Example in context
Reading: France country code (FR), check 76, bank
30001 (Banque de France), branch 00794,
account 12345678901, RIB key 85. Mod-97-10 validation: move
"FR76" to the end → "300010079412345678901 85 FR76", convert F=15,
R=27 → "3000100794123456789018515 27 76", compute mod 97 = 1. OK.