Screwed up SEPA (in Ireland)

Impetus

There is an error in radio advertising and on the related website. It talks of a BIC as a “Business Identifier Code” – implying it has something to do with identifying the paying party. BIC of course stands for Bank Identifier Code.

The anonymous website in question has no Impresum or other contact information to report the issue to.

In my view there is no need for the BIC in a well-conceived bank payment system, because the IBAN contains all the information necessary to determine the name of the bank and branch identity. In a payment entry using an intelligently designed ebanking system, one commences to enter the BIC the rest of the details auto-fill, aside from the amount and reference details for the beneficiary. If you have paid to the same account before, even the IBAN auto-fills itself after a few characters.

Ireland has further shot itself in the foot by wasting space by forcing the bank identity twice in the IBAN itself – making this longer than it need be. The “sorting code” element also assumes that the Central Bank has plans for Ireland to “return” to the “United Kingdom” someday by retaining the 9 prefix to the sorting code. The 9 has been redundant for decades.

IE99 934178 78767676 is more than enough to point to an account at AIB, 66 South Mall, Cork – and as I say the initial 9 could be omitted from the “sorting code”.

Having a short IBAN would make life much simpler, make SEPA more user-friendly, and reduce time wasting and eliminate the confusion of trying to communicate “AIBK” to somebody who does not speak good English – ie knows how the English alphabet is pronounced – which is completely different from every other alphabet in Europe.

In addition I would take the view that the SEPA publicity should have taken place several years ago – many other countries have used IBANs to replace of legacy account numbers several years ago. There is no mention of the SEPA IBAN barcode in the site, which could appear on invoices to simplify data entry – either using a barcode reader in an office environment or using a mobile phone payment application for consumers to pay paper invoices.

I ask myself why does Ireland always make systems un-necessarily complicated? Like the proposed postcode “non-system” – which is completely at variance with the tried and tested systems used in every other country on the continent, where the code is universally short, all numeric and simple.

www.readyforsepa.ie.

Graham

Looks like it belongs to the Central Bank.

This might be a start for contact info:

https://www.iedr.ie/whois-results/?option=com_content&view=article&whois=readyforsepa&id=86&Itemid=105&Search.x=-2082&Search.y=-302

tacofries

I dont know if its just as easy as shortening the length of the IBAN? doesnt it have to add up to 1 mod 37 or something like that so that the account number can be verified? ? Maybe I am taking your post up wrong. .

davybyrne007

Hi impetus,

if you check the EPC rule book it refers to a Business identifer code. At some point, banks etc started referring to it as Bank identifier and thats stuck. Sepa publicity has been running for two years

K.Flyer

Am I missing something here?
IBAN numbers have been around for years and I have been using them for EU transfers for a long time. Is this SEPA something different or is it just to get everyone using the IBAN system for transferring.
Thanks.