IBAN – International Bank Account Number – basic information
The IBAN (International Bank Account Number) is an account number format defined in the ISO 13616 international standard. In 2007 this standard was aligned and harmonized with the European Standard EBS204 (pdf, 211 kB)issued by the ECBS (European Committee for Banking Standards) in 1996. Detailed information on the IBAN can be found on the SWIFT website, which is the official registration authority for all matters relating to the IBAN - https://www.swift.com/standards/data-standards/iban .
The specific form of an account number in IBAN format is generated by the bank which maintains the account.
The international account number format is defined by the standard in the following way:
- The IBAN can consist of digits and capital letters
- The IBAN has the following structure:
- 2 characters – ISO country code (CZ for the Czech Republic)
- 2 characters – check digits allowing program control of the account number – protection for situations where the account number is entered incorrectly
- bank code and account number (20 characters for the Czech Republic)
- The IBAN has two formats – electronic format (without blanks) and written representation (with groups of 4 characters separated by blanks)
Each country stipulates its own structure by determining
- the number of characters of the account number in the IBAN format
- the position of the bank code (or bank branch code)
- the position of the account number assigned by the bank
Examples of account numbers in various formats for the Czech Republic
| National format | IBAN - electronic format | IBAN - written representation |
|---|---|---|
| 19-2000145399/0800 | CZ6508000000192000145399 | CZ65 0800 0000 1920 0014 5399 |
| 178124-4159/0710 | CZ6907101781240000004159 | CZ69 0710 1781 2400 0000 4159 |
The IBAN was introduced in order to support automatic processing of cross-border orders, to accelerate, simplify and reduce the costs of cross-border payments, and, finally, to reduce the occurrence of mistakes due to account numbers being entered incorrectly.