The IBAN started in Europe and has spread to the Middle East and to parts of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. In the Americas, Brazil, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua are in the SWIFT IBAN Registry. Many of the world's largest economies still do not use it. The United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, China, India and Japan are not in the SWIFT IBAN Registry.
What they use instead
These countries identify accounts with a domestic account number plus a code for the bank or branch:
| Country | Bank or branch code | Format |
|---|---|---|
| United States | ABA routing number | 9 digits, plus a separate account number |
| Canada | Institution and transit (branch) numbers | 3 and 5 digits; for payment routing they are combined into a 9-digit code that starts with 0 |
| Australia | BSB (Bank-State-Branch) | 6 digits, plus a separate account number |
| New Zealand | Bank and branch inside the account number | Bank (2 digits), branch (4), account (7), suffix (2 or 3) |
| India | IFSC | 11 characters: 4 letters for the bank, a 0, then 6 characters for the branch |
China and Japan also have their own domestic systems for identifying banks, branches and accounts.
Sending money to these countries
International transfers to a country without IBAN usually need:
- the recipient's account number, exactly as their bank gives it
- the BIC (SWIFT code) of the recipient's bank
- often the domestic bank code as well, such as the routing number, BSB or IFSC
- the recipient's name and address
If your banking app insists on an IBAN for a country that does not use one, look for an option such as "account number" or "other format". Do not try to build an IBAN out of a US or Australian account number: such a number does not exist, and a generator that produces one is giving you invalid data.
Receiving money from Europe
Someone with a bank account in a non-IBAN country cannot get an IBAN for that account. To receive euros through SEPA they need an account in a SEPA country. Some payment providers offer such accounts, with an IBAN, to people living elsewhere.
Why IBAN never caught on everywhere
The IBAN was designed to wrap existing national account numbers, and its main push came from European payment integration, with SEPA making it mandatory for euro payments. Countries with large domestic payment systems of their own had less reason to adopt it. The registry keeps growing, though: a short history of the IBAN lists the countries that joined in recent years.
Sources
- SWIFT IBAN Registry, Release 102 (June 2026): the list of countries that use the IBAN. A country that is not in it has no registered IBAN format.