IBAN

International Bank Account Number.

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.

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
• max. 30 characters - bank code and account number

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 

• assigning fixed positions for the bank code (or bank branch code)
• assigning fixed positions for the account number

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.