International Bank Account Number Definition
The International Bank Account Number (IBAN) is an international standard for numbering bank accounts. It was originally adopted by the European Committee for Bank Standardisation, and was later adopted as ISO 13616:1997. The IBAN consists of a two letter ISO 3166-1 country code, followed by two check digits, and up to thirty alphanumeric characters for the domestic bank account number, called the BBAN (Basic Bank Account Number). It is up to each country's national banking community to decide on the length of the BBAN for accounts in that country, but its length must be fixed for any given country. A unique identifying code for the bank, of a fixed length and at a fixed position, is required to be contained in the BBAN. However, it is left up to the national banking communities to determine its length and position within the BBAN, so long as it is constant for each country.