IBAN
Questions and answers
What is the IBAN?
- The IBAN (International Bank Account Number) is an internationally agreed code consisting of letters and numbers that uniquely identify your account. It is formatted according to the European Banking Standards Committee's specifications.
What is the purpose of the IBAN?
- The purpose of the IBAN is to facilitate money transfers within and outside Greece. By using the IBAN code you can safely transfer your account number as it limits manual intervention when crediting it.
How can I use the IBAN in cross-border payments?
- The bank creates and then notifies you of your IBAN.
- You inform your principal of your IBAN.
- Your principal submits a cross-border credit transfer order containing the IBAN account number.
- The IBAN number is checked for correctness by the principal's bank and forwarded to your bank, which receives the order and, based on the IBAN, credits the corresponding amount to your account.
How is the IBAN structured?
The IBAN number has a fixed number of characters for each country with a maximum length of 34 alphanumeric characters. In Greece, it has a fixed length of 27 alphanumeric characters, where:
- the first two alphabetic characters specify the country where the account is held, (for Greece GR)
- the next two are check digits and validate the entire IBAN
- the last section is the Basic Bank Account Number (BBAN), which in most cases contains the bank code , the branch code and the customer's account number
In Greece the BBAN consists of:
- the code of the bank (3 digits)
- the code of the branch (4 digits) and
- the customer's account number (16 digits)
When the customer's account has less than 16 digits, the bank will fill it with zeros placed at the beginning of the account.
How is the IBAN written?
The IBAN can be used in electronic and paper form. The paper form is the same as the electronic form, the only difference being that the paper IBAN is divided into groups of 4 characters separated by a space. The last group may be of variable length, up to 4 characters.
Example IBAN example
In Greece the BBAN (basic account number):
01720110005011000009849 where,
017 the code of the bank
2011 the branch code
0005011000009849 the account number
To convert the bank account number to IBAN, the country code and the two check digits must precede the basic account number as in the following example:
What is the BIC / SWIFT code?
The BIC / SWIFT code uniquely identifies a bank, globally. Piraeus’s BIC code is PIRBGRAA for its entire network of branches in Greece.