Talk:International Bank Account Number

security advice

I see the statement under security and privacy:

 "Since an IBAN is nothing more than an enhanced bank account number, account holders should give the same security considerations to their IBANs as they do to their bank account numbers."  

Presumeably, wikipedia should not be giving advice.

Moreover, I think this is poor advice. An ACH account number in the US can be used to print phony checks, or draw money out of electronically. Whereas it's quite common to print IBAN numbers on business cards, letterheads, and other stationary, because the accounts are implemented in a way that criminals cannot externally draw from them. Jgombos (talk) 11:01, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

purpose

This page is for code junkies not for anyone looking for any useful link to a service that actually gives you a human manageable way of calculating a result from input data �Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.246.124.154 (talk) 14:34, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

in the examples its totally unclear what those kk and CCCC and so on mean

I agree. That needs fixing.  :) — Helpful Dave 13:04, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

External links

The link Regulation regarding the usage of the IBAN codes in Romania explains in detail the IBAN codes in Romania: format, usage etc. It should really be added as it contains useful information in sync with the content of the article.

countries, where IBAN is applied?

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On the official page there are some lists. Also there is a sub-list of IBAN applicants that also apply some TR201 regulations and SWIFT methods...

But I have a brochure from our central bank about the imminent adoption of IBAN here at home. In the brochure IBAN is described as "Until Jan2006 IBAN is applied in 42 states, including all members of the EU". The lists on the official page seem shorter (if we count all entries - states and overseas territories - there are more than 42. If we count states only - there are less than 42). 199.64.72.25 (talk • contribs • email)

[According to the dropdown lists at http://www.ecbs.org/iban/iban.htm IBAN seems to be used in all of the EU including all dependent territories, plus the following countries and dependent territories of EU countries (including dependent territories that aren't part of the EU):] Delete, this is a 404.

Andorra Bosnia and Herzegovina Croatia Iceland Liechtenstein Macedonia, Former Yugoslav Republic of Monaco (identical to the French format except for the country code 'MC') Norway Romania San Marino (identical to the Italian format except for the country code 'SM') Serbia and Montenegro Switzerland Tunisia Turkey United Kingdom

Not all of the above countries are mentioned on the IBAN page. (Change: see the new SWIFT link http://www.swift.com/index.cfm?item_id=61334 for an up-to-date list)

Stefan2 04:55, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Swedish IBANs

It says:

   * Swedish IBAN format: SEkk BBBB CCCC CCCC CCCC CCCC
       The Bs represent the bank code and the Cs the account number.

This needs some explanation. What is the bank code? At first I thought it was the sort code ("clearingnummer"), but then I realised that the BBBB part in my IBAN is 3000, while my sort code is 3300. Secondly, many of FöreningsSparbanken's sort codes are 5-digit codes instead of 4-digit as used by most other banks, and postal giro accounts, while they have IBANs, don't have sort codes at all.

Stefan2 04:25, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Please verify.....

The first paragraph on the front page:

"....and was later adopted as ISO 13616:1997 and now as ISO 13616:2003"

The info provided by this sentence doesn't seem to be correct according to the webpage at

http://www.iso.org/iso/en/CatalogueDetailPage.CatalogueDetail?CSNUMBER=41031&ICS1=3&ICS2=60&ICS3=&scopelist=

To my knowledge, if a standard is published and later revised, the history of the versions will be listed. See this page for more information

http://www.iso.org/iso/en/CatalogueDetailPage.CatalogueDetail?CSNUMBER=18167&ICS1=35&ICS2=100&ICS3=70

�The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.52.66.10 (talk) 12:12, 16 April 2007 (UTC).

Why is Morocco listed in the IBAN examples ? Any source for this information ?

�The preceding unsigned comment was added by 196.12.206.91 (talk) 14:41, August 20, 2007 (UTC)

There seems to be an issue with the checksum calculation. The English version of this page specifies minus one, modulo 97 and plus one on the remainder again. This is to avoid a zero value.

However, many other sources ommit this minus-one-plus-one operation, and simply specify modulo 97. Notable examples are the description on the Dutch version of this page [[1]] and the algorithm implemented on the German site for IBAN calculations [[2]]. It is not clear to me what the ISO specifications say on this issue, as they cannot easily be consulted.

As an example consider the German domestic account number BLZ 50040000 KTO 0336665500, for which both variants yield a different checksum, 01 versus 98. The correct IBAN seems to be DE98500400000336665500.

Is this a genuine example? Both variants will be passed by the IBAN validator as being valid. If it is genuine, a note to this effect might be useful. --Martinvl (talk) 14:18, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I have removed the minus-one-plus-one operation to bring the text into line with the text of numerous other sources. The zero result for the mod operation is of no consequence since this will yield a checksum of 98 and 98 mod 97 = 1. May I also draw to attention that there is a warning in certain sources that only banks should perform the actual IBAN calculation. Martinvl (talk) 12:06, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

ISO 7064 mod 97-10

What is "ISO 7064 mod 97-10"? I am reading the document þhttp://www.ecbs.org/Download/EBS204_V3.2.pdf EBS204_V3.2] and after saying that ISO 7064 mod 97-10 should be applied, it is said that should be 1 the remainder of the division of the number by 97. So this is just that the whole number should be congruent to 1 mod 97. There no need to invoke an ISO standard (and what id ISO 7064) and why there is a 10 after the 97? In the standard and here is written a sentence that is much more complicated than what is required. -- AnyFile (talk) 20:16, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Moldova has IBAN too

Sorry for barging in. I am in Moldova and I just received a new bank card and my account has an IBAN code: MD11 MOBB nnnl lnnn nnnn nnnn (the first two groups are as is, i guess country and bank, the rest: n is a digit, l is a letter). Hope this helps 89.41.123.245 (talk) 10:48, 9 October 2008 (UTC)Vitalie

Similar Domestic Systems

The article has a section called "similar domestic systems".

This is rather stupid. The whole point of IBAN is that it is INTERNATIONAL and not NATIONAL! We could end up listing the national bank routing systems for hundreds of countries but this will end up telling us NOTHING about IBAN. As far as I know IBAN is the only attempt at providing a transnational routing code for a bank account that can work globally.

For this reason I propose that we delete this section. It tells us nothing about IBAN and is a distraction.--Tom (talk) 19:25, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Is this pure math?

I'm a bit disgusted with Hauskalainen's censorship of information on the dangers/pitfalls of IBAN wire transfers. Does everyone agree that discussion about a number should strictly be confined to the math, and not the use of the number? If so, the responsible action is to move the content, not destroy it by vandalizing the security and privacy section. Jgombos (talk) 12:33, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Jgombos. However the security and privicy section read a little like an anti-advertisement. It should have been rewritten emphasising that IBAN numbers was an addition to the current banking system, not an alternative. Martinvl (talk) 20:42, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I apologise for the delay in responding to this. I assume that you are referring to my deletion of the following text

IBAN wire transfers are not completely free of vulnerabilities. Every intermediate bank that handles a transaction can take a fee directly out of the wire payload (the assets being transferred) without the account holders knowledge or consent. There is no legislation or technical means to protect customers from this practice. If bank S is the sending bank (or brokerage), and bank R is the receiving bank (or brokerage), and bank I1, I2, and I3 are intermediary banks, the client may only have a contract with bank S and/or R, but banks I1, I2, and I3 can (and often do) take money from the wire without any direct arrangement with the client. Clients are sometimes taken by surprise when less money arrives at bank R. Contrast this with checks, the amount transferred is guaranteed in full, and fees (if there are any) can only be charged at endpoint banks.

I am not engaging in censorship and I rather resent the fact that you should think so. There is no such thing as an "IBAN wire transfer" because it is not a system for transmitting funds (i.e. it is not like Fedwire or ACH in the USA). You write this as though you believe that the IBAN's purpose is to protect the receiver of funds from meeting the costs of transmission. It is not. Its purpose is basically 1) to add a common system of check digiting to guard against data corruption and misrouting and speed up the process os sending funds by allowing errors to be detected early on and 2) to make it easier to identify all the information needed to route a payment by providing a common format for expressing an IBAN.

What you are referring to is of course an issue to receivers of funds transmitted across borders and between banks where there intermediate banks bearing costs of transmission. When payments are sent across national borders it is common for banks to be able to express who bears the cost of money transmission. This is expressed as a specific code in field 71a of the SWIFT transmission. Where this is expressed as /BEN it means that the beneficiary should bear all costs. If /OUR it means that the initial remitting bank will bear all costs (and will presumably pass this back to the sending customer). Nearly all banks use SWIFT and understand this. See http://www.business.barclays.co.uk/BBB/A/Content/Files/BIB_Import_guide.pdf as an example of this. Anyhows, the purpose of the IBAN is not to protect the parties from having to bear costs, but field 71a in the SWIFT message is how remitting banks convey instructions for this. Some words of warning tho! Inserting a value in field 71a adds greatly to the cost because it often prevents STP ("Straight thru processing"). When costs are directed to a particular party the costs are likely to be much higher than they would have been had the banks followed their normal practice. --Hauskalainen (talk) 18:43, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

FYI cross border payments were once very expensive within Europe. For instance it used to cost 24 euros to send just 100 euros from one account to another. The EU intervened and told the banks to reduce their costs. As a result the banks quicky set up a more efficient system and it now costs just two and half euros to make that same transaction today. http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/07/32&format=HTML&aged=1&language=EN&guiLanguage=en In my opinion that is still too high, but its many times better than it once was!--Hauskalainen (talk) 18:53, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

The section on Security and Privacy looks put of place. It should either be removed or expanded. If it is expanded, I suggest that it be renamed "Commentary" and that matters such as security, privacy, reliability etc be discussed, a single sentence for each, using the pre-IBAN system as a point of reference. Any comments? Martinvl (talk) 07:58, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

User:Hauskalainen is having a lone battle against people using the Internet to validate IBANs. He might be right, on the other hand he might have an unreasonable paranoia about this. If there is a genuine problem with using internet-based IBAN validators, the responsible course of action for Hauskalainen is to cite references warning against this and to ensure that the message is distributed to all the different language versions of Wikipedia. If he cannot find any such references, then we must assume either that he has an unreasonable paranoia or that he is trying to publish original research � neither of which have a place in Wikipedia.

Prior to writing the material that Hauskalainen removed, I did a survey of the IBAN article in Wikipedia in a number of different languages. I tested all the IBAN validators that I came across using the fictitious IBAN example in the English language text. Am I not allowed to do that? If not, why not? Moreover, in my latest version, I stated Hauskalainen�s case and left him a space where he could insert his citation.

I invite other users to comment. Martinvl (talk) 20:50, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

I am not saying you are not allowed to do anything. Just that it is a wise precaution to be aware of the risks. I agree that I have no source saying that it is an unwise thing to do and I do find it amazing that even pament organizations such as APACS have put validators on their web site. Having said that I am sure that this is out of absentmindedness. Almost certainly the web site is managed by the IT department which no doubt had reason to develop the software and thought it a good feature for the web site. Personally I think the more security conscious,if they thought about it, would take a different opinion of the wisdom of encouraging people to "validate" information by giving confidential information to third parties who do not need it and at worst could misuse it. You would not do this with your credit card details so why do it with your bank account details? I have a professional degree in banking and have been responsible in banking organizations for both payment systems and systems security. I do not make this case on the basis of whim, but in the spirit of encouraging people to treat their personal information with some degree of care that does not expose them or their banks to unnecessary risk. I wonder why you would want to remove such a warning. It does no harm to think about the risks.--Hauskalainen (talk) 14:41, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

If you are in the banking industry, then you have a better platform than most to let your fears be known. Your energy is best expended there rather than in Wikipedia. Once you have convinced the banking indutry of your fears, by all means reference the public advice given by the banks in Wikipedia. Until then please abide by WIkiepdia's policies. Martinvl (talk) 15:37, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Proliferation of links

I have become a little concerned at the proliferation of links and references that are appearing in this article. I propose pruning then down as follows:

• External links will be limited to official definitions only (SWIFT, UN agencies etc).
• References to documents issued by individual country�s national banks will be removed unless that country is not yet in the official SWIFT list.
• References to parts of an IBAN will be replaced by Wiki-links to the language concerned � for example the reference of a CIN (for Italy) will be replaced by a Wiki-link to it:Coordinate bancarie, but will appear as CIN in the IBAN article. A warning will be posted that some of the Wiki-links will be to non-English articles.
• References or links to any particular bank will be regarded as SPAM unless it is used to illustrate or to back up a specific point that is described in the article�s text which is not otherwise illustrated or backed up.

Any Comments? Martinvl (talk) 11:27, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

No original though or research

Wikipedia has a policy of no original thought or research - WP:NOP.Hauskalainen, but adding reams of unreferenced warnings about the dangers of publishing one's IBAN appears to be promoting is own views. The following is taken from the Wikipedia policy on the matter Wikipedia does not publish original research or original thought. This includes unpublished facts, arguments, speculation, and ideas; and any unpublished analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position. This means that Wikipedia is not the place to publish your own opinions, experiences, arguments, or conclusions.

When adding his unsourced material, User:Hauskalainen removed a citation needed flag, but failed to add a citation. Another of Wikipedia's policies is that of verifyability WP:VERIFY. Removal of citation needed flags should only be done once a reliable citation has been added. (See Template:Citation needed) Martinvl (talk) 10:12, 23 January 2010 (UTC)