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Professionals / Toolbox / Payment Standards / Luxembourg register of IBAN/BIC codes

Luxembourg register of IBAN/BIC codes

According to the Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on technical and commercial requirements for credit transfers and direct debits in euro, the IBAN must be used to identify payment accounts for credit transfers and direct debits. Only the bank holding the account is allowed to generate the IBAN.

As payment service users are not required to provide the BIC when ordering a payment, it is up to the payment service providers to provide the BIC. The International Standards Organisation has designated SWIFT as the registration authority. The BIC code will be assigned by SWIFT upon request of the supervised entity.

Therefore, all Luxembourg supervised entities that open accounts and offer payment services to customers must issue bank accounts identified by IBAN/BIC. This rule also applies to a branch authorised to offer financial services in Luxembourg as it directly carries out, in whole or in part, transactions related to the payment service provider. If, among these operations, it opens accounts for its customers, it must be considered as the institution managing the account and the company, with LU as identifier in both codes.

Luxembourg register of IBAN/BIC codes

The ABBL manages the Luxembourg IBAN/BIC register in coordination with the Luxembourg supervisors on behalf of the Luxembourg PSP (Payment Service Provider) community. 

An updated version can be downloaded below along with a document showing recent changes. If you have any question regarding the IBAN-BIC table, please contact us at ibanbic@abbl.lu.

Attribution of the IBAN or bank code

A supervised entity that opens bank accounts identified by IBAN/BIC and offers payment services to its customers must submit an application for registration to the ABBL: ibanbic@abbl.lu.

The following information is required:

  • the identification number assigned by the CSSF and published on the CSSF website
  • the BIC code provided by SWIFT to the requesting entity
  • the date on which the IBAN/BIC codes will become operational 

  • What is an International Bank Account Number (IBAN)?

    The IBAN is a uniform account number structure based on the addition of information to existing national standard formats. This improves the accuracy of a bank account number for verification purposes, regardless of the country of origin. Uniform information is also available to facilitate automatic processing (country code, bank code, account number, cheque number or check digit). 

    The IBAN standard (ISO 13616-1) stipulates that "the first two letters are always the two-character country code (alpha-2 code), as defined in ISO 3166-1, of the country in which the financial institution managing the account is resident" (for Luxembourg: LU). 

    It takes the following form: "IBAN" + country code (2 letters) + control characters (2 digits) + national number (fixed length for each country). For accounts held with Luxembourg banks, an IBAN number takes the following form IBAN LU97 8881 2345 6789 0123.

  • What are the characteristics of the Luxembourg IBAN format?

    The Luxembourg IBAN has a fixed length of 20 alphanumeric characters according to the EBS 204 standard (upper case characters from A to Z and from 0 to 9).

    The data structure is as follows:

    • Positions 1 and 2: Country code: alphabetical code according to ISO 3166 (i.e. "LU").
    • Positions 3 and 4: Check-digit: numeric field according to ISO 7064.
    • Positions 5 to 20: BBAN (Basic Bank Account Number) of which :
      • Positions 5 to 7: Bank code assigned by the ABBL in agreement with the Luxembourg supervisory authorities.
      • Positions 8 to 20: Identification number freely available to each bank (13 alphanumeric characters according to the EBS204 standard; capital letters from A to Z and 0 to 9).

  • What is a BIC code?

    The BIC code, which stands for Business Identifier Code, is an international standard for identifying institutions in the financial services sector. It is used to address messages, route business transactions and identify business parties.

    ISO 9362 specifies the elements and structure of a BIC. A BIC consists of eight or eleven contiguous characters. It consists of the first three or four elements: the company prefix, the country code, the company suffix and the branch identifier.

    AAAA BB CC DDD

    • First 4 characters (alphanumeric) - company prefix.
    • The next 2 characters (alphanumeric) - country code as defined in ISO 3166-1, the country being "the location of the company", i.e. "LU" for organisations located in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.
    • The next 2 characters (alphanumeric) - suffix of the part of the company
    • The last 3 characters (alphanumeric) and (optional) - business part suffix (i.e. the branch identifier used to identify specific locations, departments, services or units of the same business part); optional ("XXX" for the main office)