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 - http://www.swift.com/solutions/messaging/information_products/directory_products/iban_format_registry/index.page?lang=en.

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

Examples of account numbers in various formats for the Czech Republic

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.

On the date of accession of the Czech Republic to the European Union (1 May 2004) " Regulation (EC) No 2560/2001 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 December 2001 on cross-border payments in euro " became part of the Czech legal environment. Under this Regulation, all banks are obliged to indicate the account number in IBAN format as well as the BIC (Bank Identifier Code, which is part of the IBAN) on statements of account. The bank is also obliged to communicate these data to each customer upon request.

IBAN – historic development

The IBAN standard was created in the second half of 1990s by the ECSB (European Committee for Banking Standards).  It was based on the international ISO 13616 standard. However, the IBAN standard determined more specific rules, e.g. fixed length of IBAN for concrete country or use of only capital letters. Detailed information can be found in the EBS204 (pdf, 211 kB) standard.

The IBAN register (standard TR201 (pdf, 1,3 MB)) was administrated by the ECBS. Since 2005, the IBAN register has been administrated by the EPC (European Payment Council). The register contained definitions of IBAN made by individual states, factually for the states whose banks determined the IBAN format for their country and registered it in the register. 

In 2000, the Czech National Bank took charge of this initiative and in co-operation with the Czech Banking Association registered the IBAN format for the Czech Republic.

The ECSB and the EPC struggled in the long term for the ISO 13616 standard to be supplemented in the way to be compliant with the IBAN standard. The works on the updating of the ISO 13616 standard were in motion for several years. Finally, in 2007 the new ISO 13616 standard was issued.

In addition to the supplemented rules for the IBAN format, the new ISO 13616 standard defines also an administrator of the register of the national IBAN formats. SWIFT was decided to be the administrator.

In 2007, SWIFT took the role and thus the EPC finished the administration of the IBAN register.

The last version of the IBAN register (standard TR201 (pdf, 1,3 MB)) comes from February 2007. The EBS204 (pdf, 211 kB) standard describing the IBAN standard was fully replaced with the new ISO 13616 standard as well.