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Who knows their IBAN and BIC?

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A question came up in today’s EBA sessions for Joe Pawelczyk, Vice President for
International Relations at CHIPS, the American Clearing House for over $2 trillion of
wire payments each day. The question seemed quite simple: “Why doesn’t America
use IBANs for their bank account numbers, as all of Europe has now standardised
on this?”

Joe looked a bit non-plussed and piped up with: “Because we
cannot define a stadnardised account number.”

Well, a standardised account number is an IBAN (International Bank Account
Number) and BIC (Bank Identifier Code) isn’t it?

Oh wait.

I just noticed.

IBANs and BICs are not standardised.

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Chris Skinner Author Avatar

Chris M Skinner

Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...