Payment Routing

Thoughts about the relations of IBAN, BIC, routing number, account number and online banking; there best storing place, …

Classes of Bank Transfers

Intra Bank

Example

Move money from your checking account to your saving account.

Required

Account number

Traditional Domestic

Example

Pay your domestic supplier

Required

Account number, National bank code aka (domestic) routing number

Optional

Name and branch of target bank

International by SWIFT

Example

Pay your overseas supplier

Required

Account number, BIC

Optional

Name and branch of target bank

SEPA

Example

required for paying inside the EURO zone

Required

IBAN

IBAN Structure

1. country code using ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 – two letters,
2. check digits – two digits, and
3. Basic Bank Account Number (BBAN) – up to 30 alphanumeric characters that are country-specific.

Note

The national bank code and account number are usually part of the BBAN.

IBAN Area

Example

more countries are adapting the IBAN from EEA to Timor-Leste.

Required

IBAN + BIC

Note

After SWIFT recognized the mapping between IBAN and BIC, BIC is no longer required.

GnuCash

At least in invoices it is common, to print the Payment Routing in the footer

1. Textual
2. as part of a QR code.

Instead of beeing hidden in report options ——, it should become part of the book options below Company Name At least in DE many organizations have more than one bank connection. Background the money was usually travelling a few days, when the transfer crossed the border between the main branches municipal, cooperative and private banks. So I would suggest to have a list banks with variable records:

1. Bank name (and optionally branch) as human readable form
2. IBAN

   if IBAN is not set the following are required. Else they are informative or obsolete:

   1. account number
   2. national bank code
3. BIC (optionally, required in some cases)

Online Banking

In some cases some infos like IBAN/account number are also set, when the user sets up online banking. Can we reuse the infos?