Bank International Code (ISO 9362) is also called SWIFT-BIC, BIC code, and SWIFT ID. It consists of 8 or 11 English letters or Arabic numerals that are automatically interpreted by a computer. It is used to clearly distinguish financial transactions in SWIFT messages. Related different financial institutions, used to quickly process telegrams between banks.
The 11-digit letter of the bank’s international code is divided into four parts: bank code, country code, area code and branch code. Taking Bank of China Shanghai Branch as an example, its international bank code is BKCHCNBJ300, where BKCH is the bank code, CN is the country code, BJ is the area code, and 300 is the branch code.
·Bank code: It consists of 4 English letters. Each bank has only one bank code, which is decided by itself. It is usually the name or abbreviation of the bank and applies to all its branches.
Country code: consists of two English letters to distinguish the country and geographical area
·Area code: consists of two digits or two letters other than 0 or 1 Composed, used to distinguish the geographical location of the country, such as time zone, province, state, city, etc.
Branch code: composed of 3 letters or numbers, used to distinguish a certain branch or organization in a country or department. If the bank’s international bank code only has 8 digits and no branch code, its initial value is “XXX”
To know the bank’s international bank code, you can generally call the bank’s customer service number or log in to the SWIFT international website Query page query.
Take Bank of China Shanghai Branch as an example. Log in to the SWIFT international website inquiry page and enter the bank information to be queried according to the prompts. Enter the unified code of Bank of China “BKCHCNBJ” in the “BIC or Institutionname” text box; enter the pinyin “Shanghai” of the city where the bank you want to query is in the “City” text box; select “CHINA” in the “Country” drop-down list box “; Finally, enter the verification code you see in the “Challenge response” text box. After completely entering the bank information you want to query, click the “Search” button.