SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT)
Standard euro credit transfer — settlement in one business day. The default for most B2B and recurring payments.
An International Bank Account Number (IBAN) is the standardised identifier for a bank account in international payments, defined by ISO 13616 and the European Committee for Banking Standards. IBAN issuance is the process by which a bank or licensed payment institution generates a new IBAN for a customer or beneficiary entity, registers it in payment-system directories, and links it to a balance held in the institution's ledger. This guide covers IBAN issuance end-to-end, focusing on EU virtual IBANs issued through APIs at scale.
An IBAN can be up to thirty-four alphanumeric characters. The structure is consistent across countries:
For example a German IBAN is twenty-two characters; an Italian IBAN is twenty-seven; a Maltese IBAN is thirty-one. The European Committee for Banking Standards publishes the structure for each country and SWIFT maintains the global IBAN registry.
A real IBAN identifies a bank account at a specific licensed institution; the account holds a balance, can receive and send payments, and is registered in the institution's core ledger. A virtual IBAN identifies a sub-account or beneficiary reference within a master account at the institution. Funds received against a virtual IBAN are credited to the master account and reconciled to the virtual IBAN's owner via the issuer's ledger.
Virtual IBANs are the workhorse of modern fintech. They allow a partner to issue thousands of branded EU IBANs to end users — each a unique identifier that the customer can share with payers — while the underlying funds sit in the partner's safeguarded master account. The customer experience is that of a real IBAN; the operational architecture is much simpler. Codego's white-label IBAN platform issues virtual IBANs on demand through API.
Standard euro credit transfer — settlement in one business day. The default for most B2B and recurring payments.
Real-time euro transfer — settlement in under ten seconds, 24/7. Mandatory for euro-area banks and EMIs since 2024. See SEPA Instant explained.
Pull-style euro payment — initiated by the payee with the payer's mandate. Standard for subscription billing, utility bills, recurring payments.
Global messaging network for cross-border and non-euro transfers. Slower (typically one to three business days) and more expensive than SEPA, but covers virtually every currency and country.
Individual countries operate their own real-time and batch systems — Faster Payments in the UK, Bonifico in Italy, BACS, CHAPS. Modern IBAN platforms integrate the relevant local rails per market.
IBAN issuance underpins the fiat side of card programmes (debit cards backed by IBAN balances) and crypto on-/off-ramps (fiat deposits and withdrawals against an IBAN).
In the European Union, IBAN issuance falls under PSD2 for payment services and the EMI Directive for electronic-money institutions. Customer funds must be safeguarded — held in a segregated account at a credit institution or in low-risk liquid assets — and may not be co-mingled with the issuer's own funds. Anti-money-laundering rules require KYC at onboarding and ongoing transaction monitoring. The IBAN Discrimination Rule, in force across the SEPA area, prohibits requiring a domestic IBAN: any SEPA-area IBAN must be accepted for euro payments.
EU IBAN issuance in six countries, real-time API, SEPA, SEPA Instant and SWIFT.
The broader BaaS stack that IBAN issuance sits inside.
Real-time European payments and the 2024 EU mandate.
Banking as a Service end-to-end.