Azerbaijan, Baku, Jan. 15 / Trend, A. Akhundov /
All bank accounts used for interbank settlements in Azerbaijan have been transferred to IBAN standard account numbers (international bank account number). This took place on Jan. 7, 2013. Using a new form of account, Azerbaijan has already started in real time, the Azerbaijani Central Bank (CBA) reported on Tuesday.
"This action was taken to improve bank customer identification in the area of electronic payments, to increase the level of automation while processing payments and to eliminate fragmentation in the bank account structure", the CBA said.
The CBA decided to apply IBAN in bank settlements of financial institutions in Azerbaijan on June 17, 2010. A working group of CBA representatives, leading commercial banks, banking associations and relevant state agencies was established to pass to IBAN. A plan of action was also approved. According to this plan, correspondent and sub-correspondent accounts opened for the participants of payment systems, have been transformed into IBAN structure since March 2012 and were used in real time.
IBAN, applied in Azerbaijan, consists of 28 symbols and has the following structure:
AZ NR BANK HHHH HHHH HHHH HHHH HHHH
AZ - Code of Azerbaijan ("AZ"),
NR - figures for checking accounts
BANK - BIC first four symbols of SWIFT financial institution,
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH - client account number.