New Zealand bank account number

Last updated

New Zealand bank account numbers in NZD follow a standardised format of 16 digits:

Contents

While the New Zealand format is similar to Australia's Bank State Branch, the two systems are not interchangeable.

New Zealand bank account numbers in foreign currencies vary by bank.

Background

The origins of the format lay in the establishment of the Databank Systems Limited, a company set up by a consortium of competing New Zealand banks, to provide computing resources (development and operational) for the consortium members. [1]

Bank codes are coordinated by Payments NZ who administer the Bulk Electronic Clearing System (BECS). The scope of BECS includes direct debits, automatic payments, bill payments, and direct credits. [2] Payments NZ also administer the following payment systems in New Zealand: [3]

Format of account numbers

Account numbers are generally presented in the format:

BB-bbbb-AAAAAAA-SSS

where B is the bank number (2 digits), b is the branch number (4 digits), A is the account number (7 digits) and S are digits of the suffix (2 or 3 digits). Where a bank displays the suffix as two digits, a leading zero is added to pad the suffix to three digits; i.e. BB-bbbb-AAAAAAA-SS becomes BB-bbbb-AAAAAAA-0SS.

This format allows customers to have a single account number with differing suffixes for multiple accounts of differing types. This does not include credit card and loan products.

Account number prefix

Bank accounts are prefixed with six digits, two indicating the bank and four which indicate the branch. The table below shows which banks are allocated which bank prefix. A current list of branches as their associated bank/branch numbers is available for download from the Payments NZ website.

Bank nameBank prefixBranch range
ANZ 01, 04, [4] 06 and 11 (see below)0001–5699
BNZ 020001–1299
The Co-operative Bank 021242, 1245–1250 (agency arrangement via BNZ)
Westpac 030001–1999
Heartland 03
Kookmin Bank 02Agency arrangement via BNZ
NZCU 03Agency arrangement via Westpac
Rabobank New Zealand 030001–1999
China Construction Bank New Zealand 058884-8889
National Bank of New Zealand [lower-alpha 1] now ANZ 060001–1499
National Australia Bank 080000–9999
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China 105165—5169
PostBank [lower-alpha 1] 115000–8999
ASB 123000–3999
Trust Bank Southland [lower-alpha 1] 134900–4999
Trust Bank Otago [lower-alpha 1] 144700–4799
TSB 153900–3999
Trust Bank Canterbury [lower-alpha 1] 164400–4499
Trust Bank Waikato [lower-alpha 1] 173300–3399
Trust Bank Bay of Plenty [lower-alpha 1] 183500–3599
Trust Bank South Canterbury [lower-alpha 1] 194600–4649
Trust Bank Auckland [lower-alpha 1] 214800–4899
Trust Bank Central [lower-alpha 1] 204100–4199
Trust Bank Wanganui [lower-alpha 1] 224000–4049
Westland Bank [lower-alpha 1] 244300–4349
Trust Bank Wellington [lower-alpha 1] 233700–3799
Countrywide [lower-alpha 1] 252500–2599
United Bank [lower-alpha 1] 290000–9999
HSBC 302900–2956
Citibank 312800–2849
Kiwibank 389000–9499
Bank of China 888800-8805
  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 This bank no longer trades under this name or is defunct.

Account number body

The account body consists of seven digits, right adjusted and padded with zeroes if necessary. The last digit of the body is a check digit which can be validated using a modulus algorithm. [5]

Account number suffix

The table below shows the account number suffixes as introduced by Databank Systems Limited from 1969. [1] [6]

Type of accountSuffix
Cheque Account00
Number 2 Account02
Fixed Account03
Savings Account30
Credit Card Account40
Thrift Club Account50
Term Deposit Account81

Some banks (such as BNZ) include three digits of the suffix in their presentation of the number to the end customer. Other banks only show the last two digits of the suffix to the end customer. Technically, all banks have three digit suffixes, it's just that the first digit of the suffix is always 0 so it's usually ignored.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">EFTPOS</span> Type of electronic payment system

Electronic funds transfer at point of sale is an electronic payment system involving electronic funds transfers based on the use of payment cards, such as debit or credit cards, at payment terminals located at points of sale. EFTPOS technology was developed during the 1980s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International Bank Account Number</span> Alphanumeric code that uniquely identifies a bank account in any participating country

The International Bank Account Number (IBAN) is an internationally agreed upon system of identifying bank accounts across national borders to facilitate the communication and processing of cross border transactions with a reduced risk of transcription errors. An IBAN uniquely identifies the account of a customer at a financial institution. It was originally adopted by the European Committee for Banking Standards (ECBS) and since 1997 as the international standard ISO 13616 under the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The current version is ISO 13616:2020, which indicates the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) as the formal registrar. Initially developed to facilitate payments within the European Union, it has been implemented by most European countries and numerous countries in other parts of the world, mainly in the Middle East and the Caribbean. As of July 2023, 86 countries were using the IBAN numbering system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Postal code</span> Series of letters and digits for sorting mail

A postal code is a series of letters or digits or both, sometimes including spaces or punctuation, included in a postal address for the purpose of sorting mail.

ISO 9362 is an international standard for Business Identifier Codes (BIC), a unique identifier for business institutions, approved by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). BIC is also known as SWIFT-BIC, SWIFT ID, or SWIFT code, after the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), which is designated by ISO as the BIC registration authority. BIC was defined originally as Bank Identifier Code and is most often assigned to financial organizations; when it is assigned to non-financial organization, the code may also be known as Business Entity Identifier (BEI). These codes are used when transferring money between banks, particularly for international wire transfers, and also for the exchange of other messages between banks. The codes can sometimes be found on account statements.

Magnetic ink character recognition code, known in short as MICR code, is a character recognition technology used mainly by the banking industry to streamline the processing and clearance of cheques and other documents. MICR encoding, called the MICR line, is at the bottom of cheques and other vouchers and typically includes the document-type indicator, bank code, bank account number, cheque number, cheque amount, and a control indicator. The format for the bank code and bank account number is country-specific.

In the United States, an ABA routing transit number is a nine-digit code printed on the bottom of checks to identify the financial institution on which it was drawn. The American Bankers Association (ABA) developed the system in 1910 to facilitate the sorting, bundling, and delivering of paper checks to the drawer's bank for debit to the drawer's account.

A tax file number (TFN) is a unique identifier issued by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) to each taxpaying entity—an individual, company, superannuation fund, partnership, or trust. Not all individuals have a TFN, and a business has both a TFN and an Australian Business Number (ABN). If a business earns income as part of carrying on its business, it may quote its ABN instead of its TFN.

The Australian financial system consists of the arrangements covering the borrowing and lending of funds and the transfer of ownership of financial claims in Australia, comprising:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cheque</span> Method of payment

A cheque, or check, is a document that orders a bank to pay a specific amount of money from a person's account to the person in whose name the cheque has been issued. The person writing the cheque, known as the drawer, has a transaction banking account where the money is held. The drawer writes various details including the monetary amount, date, and a payee on the cheque, and signs it, ordering their bank, known as the drawee, to pay the amount of money stated to the payee.

A Bank State Branch is the name used in Australia for a bank code, which is a branch identifier. The BSB is normally used in association with the account number system used by each financial institution. The structure of the BSB + account number does not permit for account numbers to be transferable between financial institutions. While similar in structure, the New Zealand and Australian systems are only used in domestic transactions and are incompatible with each other. For international transfers, a SWIFT code is used in addition to the BSB and account number.

The National Insurance number is a number used in the United Kingdom in the administration of the National Insurance or social security system. It is also used for some purposes in the UK tax system.

A direct debit or direct withdrawal is a financial transaction in which one organisation withdraws funds from a payer's bank account. Formally, the organisation that calls for the funds instructs their bank to collect an amount directly from another's bank account designated by the payer and pay those funds into a bank account designated by the payee. Before the payer's banker will allow the transaction to take place, the payer must have advised the bank that they have authorized the payee to directly draw the funds. It is also called pre-authorized debit (PAD) or pre-authorized payment (PAP). After the authorities are set up, the direct debit transactions are usually processed electronically.

A bank code is a code assigned by a central bank, a bank supervisory body or a Bankers Association in a country to all its licensed member banks or financial institutions. The rules vary to a great extent between the countries. Also the name of bank codes varies. In some countries the bank codes can be viewed over the internet, but mostly in the local language.

Sort codes are the domestic bank codes used to route money transfers between financial institutions in the United Kingdom, and in the Republic of Ireland. They are six-digit hierarchical numerical addresses that specify clearing banks, clearing systems, regions, large financial institutions, groups of financial institutions and ultimately resolve to individual branches. In the UK they continue to be used to route transactions domestically within clearance organizations and to identify accounts, while in the Republic of Ireland they have been deprecated and replaced by the SEPA systems and infrastructure.

Payment and Settlement Systems are used for financial transactions in India. Covered by the Payment and Settlement Systems Act of 2007, legislated in December 2007, they are regulated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Board for Regulation and Supervision of Payment and Settlement Systems.

A payment card number, primary account number (PAN), or simply a card number, is the card identifier found on payment cards, such as credit cards and debit cards, as well as stored-value cards, gift cards and other similar cards. In some situations the card number is referred to as a bank card number. The card number is primarily a card identifier and may not directly identify the bank account number/s to which the card is/are linked by the issuing entity. The card number prefix identifies the issuer of the card, and the digits that follow are used by the issuing entity to identify the cardholder as a customer and which is then associated by the issuing entity with the customer's designated bank accounts. In the case of stored-value type cards, the association with a particular customer is only made if the prepaid card is reloadable. Card numbers are allocated in accordance with ISO/IEC 7812. The card number is typically embossed on the front of a payment card, and is encoded on the magnetic stripe and chip, but may also be imprinted on the back of the card.

National conventions for writing telephone numbers vary by country. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) publishes a recommendation entitled Notation for national and international telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and Web addresses. Recommendation E.123 specifies the format of telephone numbers assigned to telephones and similar communication endpoints in national telephone numbering plans.

Databank Systems Limited was the name of a not-for-profit "off balance sheet" company set up by a consortium of competing banks in New Zealand, to operate on what is nowadays termed a "Shared services Agency" basis, to provide computing resources for the consortium members. The company was set up in 1967, and in 12 years grew to be the largest non-Government data processing organisation in the Southern Hemisphere, servicing more than 1,200 banking offices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cheque truncation</span> Process of scanning cheques to produce their electronic copies

Cheque truncation is a cheque clearance system that involves the digitization of a physical paper cheque into a substitute electronic form for transmission to the paying bank. The process of cheque clearance, involving data matching and verification, is done using digital images instead of paper copies.

A routing number is the term for bank codes in Canada. Routing numbers consist of eight numerical digits with a dash between the fifth and sixth digit for paper financial documents encoded with magnetic ink character recognition and nine numerical digits without dashes for electronic funds transfers. Routing numbers are regulated by Payments Canada, formerly known as the Canadian Payments Association, to allow easy identification of the branch location and financial institution associated with an account.

References

  1. 1 2 Databank Systems Limited, Computing a Nation, c1988, 16 page booklet
  2. Payments NZ website, description of Bulk Electronic Clearing System, accessed 30/05/2013
  3. Payments NZ website, list of all payment systems, accessed 30/05/2013
  4. "Bank Branch Register". Payments NZ. Retrieved 18 May 2020.
  5. "Non-Resident Withholding Tax And Resident Withholding Tax Specification Document For the year ending 31 March 2016" (PDF). Inland Revenue / Te Tari Taake. 16 January 2019. Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 October 2018. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  6. "IBAN Checker". randommer.io. Retrieved 20 September 2020.