Account number and sort code: the pair a UK payment needs

Telling one from the other

1. Count the digits. Six digits is the sort code, eight is the account number. If you have been handed two numbers and no labels, the lengths settle it in a second, and there is no UK bank where the lengths run the other way.
2. Look for the three pairs. Sort codes are conventionally written 12-34-56. Account numbers are written as a single run of eight. The formatting is convention rather than rule, but it is nearly universal on UK statements and cards.
3. Read a cheque bottom left to right. On a UK cheque the machine-readable band along the bottom carries the cheque number, then the sort code, then the account number. Unlike a US check, the sort code sits in the middle rather than at the left.

What the pair lets someone do

It lets them pay money in. That is the entire purpose, and it is why the pair is printed on cheques and shown in banking apps under a button that invites you to share it. Taking money out requires something more: a Direct Debit instruction you authorised, a card, or access to your online banking. The exposure people worry about when they hesitate to share the pair is real but sits in those places, not in the numbers.

Where the pair goes when the payment leaves the country

Lloyds Bank puts the substitution plainly for business customers: the IBAN and BIC "are used instead of your account number and sort code" for payments outside the UK, including the EU and EEA. The word instead is doing careful work there, because the sort code and account number have not disappeared; they are inside the IBAN, in the last fourteen characters. The payer's form asks for the international form, the money still lands using the domestic one.

The check that actually protects you

Confirmation of Payee compares the name you type against the name on the account at the payee's bank, and it runs inside your own bank's payment screen before the money moves. A sort code and account number that pass every arithmetical check and belong to a real account will still fail this one if the name does not match, which is exactly the case that matters when an invoice arrives with changed bank details. No external lookup can do this, and no external lookup should be trusted instead of it.

Questions people ask

Which order should I give them in?

Sort code first, then account number, matching how every UK form asks. A payee who lists them the other way has not made an error that will cost anything, as long as the labels are right.

My account number is only seven digits.

Some older accounts were issued short and the bank applies its own padding rule for payments. Ask the bank for the eight-digit form rather than adding a zero at whichever end looks right.

Can I pay a UK account with just the account number?

No. The account number is unique only within a bank, so the sort code is what makes the pair unambiguous. A payment form will not accept one without the other.

The same question in the other market

• Sort code checker across the index
• SWIFT code across the index
• Bank identification code across the index
• Account number across the index
• IBAN number UK across the index