

SWIFT Standards, a division of The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), handles the registration of these codes. Where an 8-digit code is given, it may be assumed that it refers to the primary office.

if the second character is "1", then it denotes a passive participant in the SWIFT network.if the second character is "0", then it is typically a test BIC as opposed to a BIC used on the live network.2 letters: ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code.4 letters: Institution code or bank code.

The SWIFT code / BIC code is made up of 8 or 11 characters, broken down as follows:
