What is SWIFT Code ?
SWIFT Code stands for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication Code also known as ISO 9362 or SWIFT BIC or BIC code of SWIFT ID is the standard format of Bank Identifier Codes (BIC) which is approved by the International Standard Organization (ISO). It represent as the unique identification code of a particular bank. The purpose of these codes includes the transferring of money between banks especially for international wire transfers and also used for exchanging of other messages between banks.
The SWIFT codes can also occur in the account statements and the overlapping issue between the ISO 9362 and ISO 13616 is described in the IBAN (International Bank Account Number).
SWIFT Codes are of 8 to 11 Characters.
- First 4 characters refers to Main bank code (only letters). For ex. ICICI or HDFC
- Next 2 characters refers to Country Code (only letters), to differ between ICICI India and ICICI UK.
- Next 2 characters refers are location code (letters and digits)
- Last 3 characters refers to branch code and it is optional. For example, ICICI uses XXX for all the branches across India.
If the 8 - digit code is given then it refers to the primary office and handles the registration of all these codes. So, Bank Identifier Codes are often known as SWIFT addresses or codes. For example, Deutsche Bank is an international bank with its head office Frankfurt and the primary office has the SWIFT code as DEUTDEFF.
In order to identify the endpoints in the network SWIFT uses the 12 - character codes that are derived from the BIC. This code is made up of BIC8 which is followed by 1- character rules that can identify Logical Terminal (abbreviated as LTC) or the local destination and it also have 3 character branch code. The Bank Identifier Code is a unique (single address) address which has the telecommunication messages (any type of telecommunication messages are made fast in this scheme in order to provide a quick transaction) for financial transactions.
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