Understanding International Bank Account Numbers

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the European Committee for Banking Standards (ECBS) developed the IBAN to assist companies with account identification.

The IBAN is used internationally to uniquely identify the account of a customer at a participating financial institution. The IBAN allows for validation checks through the use of international 2-character country codes as established by ISO. Additional validation is performed through the use of an algorithm/check-digit process. The account-administering bank is responsible for calculating the IBAN and providing it to its customers.

The IBAN format differs, depending on whether it is transmitted electronically or printed on paper. The variance is only in its presentation; the IBAN number remains the same whether in electronic or print format. The IBAN consists of these segments:

Segment	Definition
Country code	A two-letter country code as specified by ISO. The country code used in the IBAN is the code of the county in which the bank or branch that is servicing the IBAN resides.
Check digits	Two digits that are assigned according to an algorithm.
Basic Bank Account Number (BBAN)	An alphanumeric string of characters of up to 30 characters that includes 0–9 and A–Z in upper case letters only. The electronic format cannot contain separators or county-specific characters. The length of the BBAN is determined by the country of origin, and includes an explicit identification code of the bank or branch servicing the account at a fixed position within the BBAN.

When transmitted electronically, the IBAN is one string of characters. When printed, the IBAN is preceded by the text string IBAN and is split into groups of four characters that are separated by a space. The last group might contain fewer than four characters.

You can link the IBAN number with a bank address in the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Address Book system. When you link the IBAN with a bank address, the automatic payment process can identify the correct country for suppliers and customers who have bank accounts in multiple countries. You enter the IBAN in the Bank Account Cross-Reference (P0030A) and the Bank Account Information (P0030G) programs in the electronic format. The system stores the IBAN in the electronic format in the Bank Transit Master table (F0030).

This table shows examples of IBANs in Belgium and France:

Table Column Heading	Example for Belgium	Example for France
Account Number	510-0075470-61	20041 01005 0500013M026 06
Electronic IBAN format	BE62510007547061	FR1420041010050500013M02606
Print IBAN format	IBAN BE62 5100 0754 7061	IBAN FR14 2004 1010 0505 0001 3M02 606

The ECBS specifies that the IBAN appear on the International Payment Instruction (IPI) form in the print format but without the term IBAN. For example, the IBAN for the Belgian account number in the previous table would appear on an IPI as BE62 5100 0754 7061.