26 May 2012
The SWIFT code is an 8 or 11 alphanumeric characters code that uniquely identifies financial institution. The first four characters of a SWIFT code are letters and refer to the bank specifically. The next two characters are the country code, and the last two characters are the location code. If a SWIFT code is eleven characters, this means that the bank has added a three-digit code to denote a specific branch of a bank. It is the standard format of Bank Identifier Codes (BIC) which is approved by the International Standard Organization (ISO) and represents a particular bank or bank branch. The purpose of these codes includes the transferring of money between banks especially for international wire transfers and also used for exchanging of other messages between banks.