Bank swift code: how to find the one your bank publishes

The order that works

1. Search the bank's own help centre. The page you want is usually called international payments, sending money abroad, or IBAN and BIC. Barclays, Nationwide, Santander UK, the Co-operative Bank and Starling all publish their codes on pages with those names.
2. Open your banking app's international screen. Where the website does not state it, the app almost always does, on the same screen as your IBAN. Starling puts both behind "Account details" and then "International".
3. Check whether an intermediary is needed. Nationwide publishes both its own and the bank that receives on its behalf: "Nationwide's BIC is NAIAGB21. Intermediary Bank (HSBC) BIC is MIDLGB22." Building societies and smaller institutions frequently need the second one, and a payment sent without it can be rejected.
4. Ask, and get it in writing. For an account you are paying rather than one you hold, ask the payee to send the code from their own banking app, and confirm it by telephone on a number you already had. Bank details arriving by email, especially changed ones, are the single most common vector for invoice fraud.

Why the bank's own page beats a directory

A lookup site can only be as current as the licensed file behind it, and it cannot tell you about the intermediary arrangement, the separate code for euro accounts, or the branch block your particular payment needs. The bank's page can, because it is written by the people who operate the account. Starling's page even shows the derivation rather than just the answer, noting that for its euro accounts "the location code is 3L, which gives the SWIFT code SRLGGB3L", which is the sort of thing no directory row carries.

The codes this index holds

Five of the banks read for this index publish their own code in their own words: Barclays UK, the Co-operative Bank, Santander UK, Nationwide and Starling. The others explain what a BIC is and route customers to their app or statement instead, which is a legitimate choice on their part and is recorded here as what they publish rather than as a gap we filled. Each entry links the page it came from and shows the date it was read, so a code that has since changed can be spotted rather than trusted.

When the code you have is probably wrong

Three quick tests catch most bad codes before a payment leaves. The length must be eight or eleven characters. Characters five and six must be the country the bank is actually in. And the first four letters should be recognisable as the institution once you have seen the bank's own published code. A supplier whose SWIFT code names a country they have never mentioned banking in has given you either a correspondent's code by mistake or something worse.

Questions people ask

My bank does not publish its SWIFT code. Why?

Usually because it routes customers to the app instead, where the code is shown alongside the IBAN. Several large UK banks take this approach and it is not a sign of anything unusual.

Can one bank have more than one SWIFT code?

Yes, commonly for different currencies, different divisions or different branches. Starling publishes distinct codes for its sterling and euro accounts.

Is the SWIFT code enough on its own?

No. It identifies the bank; the payment also needs the account, which means an IBAN for a UK account or a routing number and account number for a US one.

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