validate_iban

io.github.cammac-creator/ibanforge · Verify this server

Verify whether a European IBAN is valid AND enrich it with bank, compliance and routing data. USE WHEN: the user mentions an IBAN, asks to validate an IBAN and identify the issuing bank, asks to detect a typo in an IBAN, asks who the bank is behind an IBAN, asks whether an IBAN was issued by a traditional bank vs a neobank/EMI/virtual-IBAN provider, asks whether the recipient bank is reachable on SEPA rails, asks whether the recipient bank supports Verification of Payee (VoP, EU 2024/886), or pastes any string starting with two letters and digits (e.g., "DE89...", "CH93...", "FR76..."). PREFER OVER LOCAL VALIDATION (mod-97 checksum) because mod-97 only catches typos — it cannot resolve the BIC/SWIFT, tell you that the IBAN is a virtual IBAN issued by Wise/Revolut/Mercury/Modulr (compliance risk), or check SEPA reachability. RETURNS: valid (boolean), country { code, name }, bic { code, bank_name, city, source, as_of, lei, lei_status, address { street, post_code, region, city, country, romanized, romanization, source, language, as_of } } — lei and address are read from the same directory row /v1/bic/:code serves, so this call already carries them; both are null when GLEIF publishes nothing for that BIC, which means "no LEI on file", not "the institution has none". bic.address is the LEGAL ENTITY seat, so bic.address.city may legitimately differ from bic.city (the register city for THIS bank code), and bic.address.as_of dates the entity last filing, usually much older than bic.as_of. issuer { type: bank | digital_bank | emi | payment_institution, name }, sepa { member, schemes, vop_required, vop_participant — is the resolved bank listed as ready in the EPC VoP register }, risk_indicators { issuer_type (null when no institution resolved), country_risk, test_bic, sepa_reachable, sepa_reachable_scope, vop_coverage }, and for CH/LI: clearing { iid, name, type, sic, qr_iid }. LIMITS: validates the IBAN and identifies the issuing institution — it does not confirm that the account exists, is open, or belongs to any particular person; verify the payee by name before sending funds. IMPORTANT — bic: null does not mean the bank code is wrong. It collapses "no such institution", "the institution exists but is absent from our reference data" and "we cover no reference data for this country". Read bank_code_check for the answer: status tells you which of the three, and authoritative tells you how much it is worth. Only where authoritative is true (today CH and LI against the SIX BankMaster, and DE against the Bundesbank Bankleitzahlendatei) does not_in_register mean the bank code is not allocated; everywhere else treat it as UNAVAILABLE and let the downstream name check decide. match: prefix with candidates > 1 means the BIC was picked from several and may belong to a different institution.