What is an IBAN?

International Bank Account Number - a standard way to uniquely identify an account for the purpose of improving the efficiency and speed of cross-border payments.

Whenever you make a European cross-border payment, you use an IBAN to identify the account you want to credit, together with a bank identifier code (BIC). An IBAN is mandatory if you wish to make a SEPA payment.

An IBAN is not a new bank account number. It uses the existing bank account details plus additional characters. Coutts Online will alert you if you have not entered the IBAN in a valid format for that country. A sample IBAN layout is shown on the payment screen.