IBAN

IBAN is an acronym, which stands for International Bank Account Number. It is a standard way of uniquely identifying an account for the purpose of improving the efficiency and speed of cross border payments.

IBAN's have been introduced to standardize the identification of bank accounts across all banks in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It is essential to understand the following points regarding IBAN:

• The IBAN is not a new number
• Existing account numbers will not be replaced
• Additional characters will appear in front of existing bank account numbers

The complete identifier, original bank account number plus the additional characters will be known as the IBAN. Implementation of IBAN facilitate improvements in the quality of information exchanged between banks involved in interbank customer payments either within the Kingdom or internationally and will help to reduce errors and delays.

Use the below converter to convert your bank account number to IBAN format.

You should provide your IBAN to any Government Agencies, Companies or Persons, either within Saudi Arabia or any other country, who need to send electronic payments to your bank account, including:

• Trading partners who need to make payments to you –quote your IBAN on all invoices and request for payment
• Anyone paying funds into your bank account

If you do not provide the IBAN to those making payments to your account, you run the risk of delays in receiving payments.

To make a payment, customers will need to quote an IBAN in the same way they currently quote the Beneficiary's account number. You should request the Beneficiary to provide you with his/her account number in IBAN format. This should then be used by you in your payment instruction to your own bank. If you are using an electronic payment system, it is strongly recommended that you use IBAN checking software to check the integrity of the IBAN and to guard against characters/numbers in the IBAN being accidentally transposed during input or processing.