IBAN, BIC, SWIFT
BIC / SWIFT code
The BIC (Bank Identifier Code, also known as 'SWIFT Code' and sometimes 'ISO9362 code') is an internationally unique code for a bank which also specifies which country it is in, and optionally referring to a branch.
SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) handles the registration of these codes, which is why BICs are also called SWIFT codes.
Your bank will mention this code somewhere (and may call it BIC or SWIFT). You can also search for it on this SWIFT search page.
As an example, SNSBNL2A is the BIC for the SNS bank in the Netherlands. This decomposes as:
- SNSB - basic bank code
- NL - 2-letter country code according to the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 (see also language codes, country codes)
- 2A - location code
When a BIC has 8 characters, you can assume it refers to the head office, or refer to the bank in general. In this case the location code means 'all offices', though the location code may instead be a specific city that has the head office, to much the same effect.
When a BIC is 11 characters long, three characters that were added to refer to a particular branch.
IBAN
An IBAN is an International Bank Account Number (see also ISO 13616), an unique reference to your account within countries that have adopted it, which currently includes mostly Europe.
It is calculated from the BIC, your account number (in a fixed-length form, BBAN), and includes a 2-digit checksum.
The way it is composed differs per country, in terms of how the BBAN is formed, what information is included (some of the BIC can be redundant or otherwise unnecessary, some include a sort code, etc.).
IBAN length varies accordingly. The extremes seem to be something like 15 and 34 characters.
There are free tools out there to help calculate you IBAN, for example this many-country one (or this one), and various per-country ones like this one for Dutch banks.