SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Inter-bank Financial Telecommunication)
SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) is also known as BIC (Business Identifier Codes) and as SWIFT-BIC, BIC code, SWIFT code, ISO 9362. These codes are used for international money transfer between banks.
SWIFT code Example
SBIN IN BB 455 (Example)
- SBIN – Bank code (SBI)
- IN – Country Code
- BB – Location Code
- 455 – Branch Code (Mylapore, Chennai)
Usually SWIFT code contains eleven(11) characters. Primary office SWIFT codes contains eight(8) characters
First 4 characters are used to identify Banks and Financial Institution, Next 2 characters are used to identify Country (ISO country code), Next 2 characters are location codes. The second character is meant as follows (if applicable),
- 0 – test BIC
- 1 – passive participant
- 2 – reverse billing BIC
Last 3 characters (if available) denotes branch [619 denotes primary office]