The International Bank Account Number (IBAN) is an international standard for identifying bank accounts across national borders in a way that would minimize the risk of propagating transcription errors. It was originally adopted by the European Committee for Banking Standards, and was later adopted as an international standard under ISO 1 3 6 1 6 -1:200 7. The official IBAN registrar under ISO 1 3 6 1 6 -2:200 7 is SWIFT. The IBAN was originally developed to facilitate payments within the European Union but the format is flexible enough to be applied globally. It consists of a ISO 3 1 6 6 -1 alpha-2 country code, followed by two check digits and up to thirty alphanumeric characters for the domestic bank account number (incorporating routing information), called the BBAN (Basic Bank Account Number). It is up to each country's national banking community to decide on the length of the BBAN for accounts in that country, but its length must be fixed for any given country.