International Bank Account Number (IBAN)

Definition

The IBAN is a European standard developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the European Committee for Banking Standards (ECBS) for the identification of a bank and account number.

Bank identifiers vary from country to country. Many European countries have no system of bank number or sort codes. The recipient bank is often encrypted in the recipient account number. The IBAN enables the account, bank, and country of a payee to be determined in the same way in each country, thereby eliminating problems in cross-border payment transactions.

The IBAN is a combination of country key, check digit, and the country-specific account number. It can be used instead of the bank details to give unique identification of an account.

Use

The IBAN is used in the following international infotypes in Personnel Administration:

·        Bank Details (infotype 0009)

·        External Bank Transfers (infotype 0011)

·        Membership Fees (infotype 0057)

Structure

The IBAN is an alphanumeric string of a maximum of 34 characters. Its length can be determined by individual countries.

Only numerical characters (0 – 9) and capital letters (A – Z) are permitted.

The structure is displayed in the following table:

 

Description		Abbreviation	Format	Description
Country Code		CC	2-character (alphabetic)	Country code according to ISO 3166
Check Digit		CD	2-character (numeric)	Check digit according to modulo 97-10 (ISO 7064) over the entire IBAN
Basic Bank Account Number (BBAN)	Institution ID	IID	x-character (numeric)	Unique identification of the financial institution within a country
	Bank Account Number	BAN	x-character (numeric)	Account number of a customer of the financial institution

 

Example

The following table shows an example of an IBAN in Germany:

DE77123456781234567890

 

DE	77	12345678	1234567890
Country Code	Check Digit	Bank Number	Customer Account Number