Bank Swift Codes for International Money Transfer

Bank SWIFT codes also referred to as BIC (bank identifier codes) are used as unique identifiers of financial and non-financial institution. SWIFT codes are provided to banks by The Society of Worldwide Inter-bank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) which is appointed by ISO in charge of registration of these codes.

 SWIFT assigns the institutions with 8-11 character strings made of three codes; the bank code, country code and location code. First four letters represent the code of the institution where the money is held at, usually (but not always) associated with the banks’ initials e.g. BOFA (bank of Africa), two digits represent the resident country code i.e. US ) and the last two characters represent the location code usually the state, province or time zone of the hosting institution e.g. 3E. However, branch code represented by the last three letters of an eleven character string e.g. ‘XXX’ is only necessary if the bank has several branches. The above swift code is therefore represented as BOFAKE3MXXX.

In a matter of few years the internet has consolidated itself as a very powerful platform that has changed the way we do businesses and communicate. Currently, almost any business can reach a very large market directly, fast and economically no matter the size or location of the business resulting to the accelerating growth of global markets. Businesses in both superior and third world countries are therefore paving way into online markets carrying out transactions with clients located in different parts of the world.

E-Banking and E-Marketing have now become popular terms in the business minds. Most companies are carrying out their operations online; advertising, researching for market opportunities, buying & selling their products to clients both in the local and international setting. E-marketing has also given rise to online jobs for bloggers, web designers, advertisers, customer care and researchers among others. In order to manage all this business operations /transactions, businesses operating online are making use of swift codes not only for telegraphic and wireless  money transfers between banks but also for inter-bank communication to ensure transparency, integrity and security of online money.

WMT (wire money transfer) is an example of a SWIFT transfer service which aids in reducing the turn-around time with respect to payments. It facilitates smooth and swift international financial interactions allowing one to send or receive money electronically from/to anywhere in the world cheaply. It’s the most convenient method used by businesses in making &receiving international payments to suppliers and workers and from online sales to clients.  SWIFT transfer are very fast and secure transfer service used by most international banks across the world, to make a SWIFT transfer one requires 5 types of information; the name of the receiver, transfer amount, bank account number of the receiver and the routing of the bank/financial institution.