Business Affairs Office : Administrator Services

Username:

Password:

Close | Submit

Wire Transfer Definitions

ABA, IBAN, and SWIFT / BIC

Outgoing domestic wire transfers require an ABA.

Every effort should be made to obtain the SWIFT / BIC for all outgoing international wire transfers.

If the beneficiary bank is part of the European Community (see list following), the IBAN and SWIFT / BIC are required.

What is an ABA?    (American Bankers' Association National Numeric System)

  • The ABA routing number is a unique, 9 digit identifying transit number assigned to each bank.

What is the IBAN?    (International Bank Account Number)

  • The IBAN is a series of alphanumeric characters which uniquely identify an account held at a bank.  It can be up to 34 characters long and contains a two-character country code, two check digits, and the basic bank account number.  The basic bank account number identifies the bank as well as the account holder.  In printed format, spaces are inserted for readability (i.e. DE16 5003 3300 0532 0130 00).

What is the BIC?    (Bank Identifier Code)

  • The BIC is an 8-character code also known as the SWIFT address and is uniquely assigned to banks.  Branch codes can be added to the BIC to further designate which branch of a bank should receive the SWIFT message.  When a branch code is added, the BIC has 11 characters (i.e. BARCGB22 or DEUTDE3B400).

IBAN and SWIFT / BIC are REQUIRED on invoices (European Community)

  • The European Payments Council requires that all European banks provide their account holders with their IBAN and BIC.  Additionally, the account holders are required to provide these two pieces of information on any documents used in cross-border invoicing.


 Country IBAN
Length		 Country IBAN
Length		 Country IBAN
Length
 Andorra 24 Gibraltar 23 Norway 15
 Austria 24 Greece 27 Poland 28
 Belgium 16 Hungary 28 Portugal 25
 Czech Republic 24 Iceland 26 Slovenia 19
 Denmark 18 Ireland 22 Spain 24
 Finland 18 Italy 27 Sweden 24
 France 27 Luxembourg 20 Switzerland 21
 Germany 22 The Netherlands 18 United Kingdom 22
 

Updated December 31, 2007