What is swift Code? List of swift codes of banks in Sri Lanka

Swift Code is the code you need to provide to identify a bank when transferring money overseas or receiving deposits from abroad to Sri Lanka.

What is swift?

SWIFT is the English abbreviation of Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, also known as the Global Interbank Financial Telecommunication Association. This association is responsible for connecting and helping member banks make international money transfer / receipt transactions easier with lower costs and more securely.

To become a member of SWIFT, banks and financial institutions must fulfill all conditions, including documents required by SWIFT and the most popular connection system.

Due to the nature of controlling the cash flow of the world, SWIFT’s security is very high, hackers have never been able to attack this system.

Advantages of Swift code

All banks around the world use SWIFT system due to its outstanding advantages as follows:

• This is a communication network used only in the banking system and financial institutions, so it is highly secure and safe;
• The high speed of information transmission allows a large number of transactions to be processed;
• The cost of a transaction is low compared to Letter and Telex, which is the traditional medium;
• Using SWIFT will follow a uniform worldwide standard. This is the common point of any bank joining SWIFT that can get along with the world banking community

What is Swift Code?

Swift Code is a code format that is intended to identify a bank or a financial institution in the world. This code usually consists of 8 characters or 11 characters, each with its own meanings:

• Bank name,
• Country name,
• Branch code.

In addition, the Swift Code code can also be called BIC, short for Business Identifier Codes. Both Swift codes or BIC codes have the same meaning.

See also: What is a Bank Statement? How to receive bank statement?

Convention on Swift Code code

AAAA BB CC DDD

In which:

• AAAA: is the abbreviation in English of the bank name. This is a signature that distinguishes banks and financial institutions from each other. In the first 4-character position, this AAAA only allows the use of letters from A to Z, it is not allowed to use numbers here. Using the number here will not match the standard.
• BB: The national abbreviation of the bank. These two BB characters are used according to ISO 3166-1 alpha-2. For PH banks, these 2 characters are always PH. So when looking at the Swift Code code, and seeing the 5th and 6th position with the word VN, it shows that the bank is in Sri Lanka.
• CC: A local identifier. In these 2 characters, both numbers and letters are allowed. The specified CC code is usually VX.
• DDD: A code that identifies a participating bank or bank branch. In these 3 characters it is allowed to use both numbers and letters. For example, Agribank’s Thanh Xuan Hanoi branch has the code DDD of 435.

So basically, a Swift Code (BIC) code in our country is in the form AAAAVNVXDDD.

What is Swift Code used for?

Swift Code is something that you are indispensable when receiving / transferring money internationally. As mentioned above, Swift Code makes it easy to know what the name of the bank is, in which country, what branch, and what address is it?

In Sri Lanka, most banks often use 8-character Swift Code is the most popular. Because the 11-character type has additional branch codes, a bank has many branches. Therefore, banks often put Swift Code 8 characters on their website as below table.

When receiving money from abroad, you will normally be asked to enter information such as: Account Name, Account Number, Bank Name and Swift Code Code of that bank. In it, the name of the bank you should fill in is in English and the Swift Code code is filled in corresponding to the table above.

For other banks not listed in the table, please do a further internet search to view and fill in the correct information.

List of Swift Code codes of banks in Sri Lanka