Under SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) your organisation can benefit from lower cost credit transfers and Direct Debits across the EU. However, to take advantage of this you must now be able to supply a valid IBAN (International Bank Account Number) and BIC (Bank Identifier Code) for all EU cross-border credit transfers and as of November 2009, for all Direct Debit payments too.

Your organisation should, therefore, be able to capture and validate BICs and IBANs. In addition, you may also need to establish an IBAN and BIC from a given domestic BBAN (Basic Bank Account Number), where they are not known.

If you fail to include the correct IBAN and BIC code it will result in rejection, correction and repair charges being imposed by the banks. This may significantly outweigh the savings expected from the new service.

How we can help you capture and validate BICs and IBANs

Our market-leading IBAN and BIC validation software, Bank Wizard, can validate BIC and IBAN details and reformat data at the point of entry, ensuring that you capture and process only accurate bank account details and only SEPA compliant instructions are submitted for payment.

This can substantially reduce the cost and time associated with administering incorrect and rejected cross-border and domestic payments so that you can:

• achieve significant cost savings
• make business efficiency improvements
• enhance customer service

The Experian Payments Data Conversion Service helps you comply with the latest SEPA legislation by generating BIC and IBANs from your validated BBANs.

Learn more about BIC and IBAN.