Bosnia and Herzegovina Gets IBAN

After fulfilling all the legal preconditions, Bosnia and Herzegovina has obtained the International Bank Account Number - IBAN.

Finance ministers of both BH entities have passed the Instruction on the structure and use of the IBAN, which was published in the BH Federation Official Gazette on January 22, 2007, while the identical instruction of the Finance Minister of RS will be published in the next issue of the RS Gazette.

The IBAN represents a series of letters and numbers which marks client's bank account, including the country and the bank. The IBAN is the expanded version of the basic or transactional account which is used for the unique way of client identification in the financial institution.

The need to introduce the IBAN in BH has been present for a longer period of time, mostly because of the fact that BH companies have problems with collecting of assets from abroad, since they do not have the IBAN, which makes international payment transactions more expensive. Advantages of utilization of the IBAN are reflected in easier international payments, electronic data processing, reduced costs of payment orders to foreign countries and through acceleration of execution of orders.

The IBAN consists of country code, two control numbers and the transactional account number. The IBAN for Bosnia and Herzegovina is BA39. A bank dedicates IBAN to each of its participants in the international and local payment transactions and it has an obligation to indicate the IBAN and identification code of the bank on account statement of every of its participants in payment transactions.

The deadline for implementation of the IBAN is two years, but it is believed that commercial banks will introduce it before the deadline.

The IBAN was introduced in 1997 and it is compulsory in the European Union (EU) countries, it is not an option. In the establishing and redefining of the IBAN, the international standards, prescribed by the European Committee for the Banking Standards, are applied.

In the process of the IBAN introduction, the full cooperation of the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina (CBBH), Association of Banks of Bosnia and Herzegovina and finance ministries of both entities has been achieved.