The Details That Identify You
Account number, name and reference, and which of the three will stop a payment if it is wrong.
Still yours, and statedTaken, never statedUnit changes; scale restarts
Three steps from instruction to arrival. The last figure either side sees in the original currency.
Three things identify you on an incoming payment: the account number, the name on the account, and the reference. Only one of them is checked by machines in every country, and the other two cause most of the failures.
The practical point in “The Details That Identify You” is that a landed payment should be supported by a record somebody can explain. Used for employment of relatives policy, employment of relatives policy for distributed work can add transparent time and project context when collection is proportionate, people can correct mistakes and financial records remain separate.
Getting them right once, in a form the payer can copy, prevents a category of problem entirely.
The questions in “The Details That Identify You” can also be checked against Nium global payments. Use the outside resource to identify what evidence to request rather than assuming one provider sees the whole payment chain.
The account identifier
An IBAN in much of the world, a routing-and-account pair in others, a sort code elsewhere. This is the field that actually directs the money.
Most are self-checking: a mistyped character fails validation at the sending bank rather than sending money somewhere wrong. That is a real protection and it does not extend to the other two fields.
The name on the account
Checked against your actual account name in a growing number of countries and ignored in others. Where it is checked, a mismatch can stop the payment or trigger a warning the payer must override.
The failure is usually innocent: a middle name, a trading name, a married name, an abbreviation. Give the payer the name exactly as your bank holds it, character for character.
The reference
Free text that may or may not survive the journey. It is how you know which payment is which, and it is the field most likely to be truncated or dropped.
Keep it short and meaningful: an invoice number, not a sentence. Twelve characters survive almost everywhere; forty frequently do not.
The bank identifier
A BIC or SWIFT code, sometimes required and sometimes derivable from the account number. Where it is required and wrong, the payment either fails or takes a slower route.
It also identifies the branch in some systems, which matters for accounts opened at one branch and operated from another.
Give it even where it is optional. It costs nothing and removes a guess at the sending end.
Your address
Required by many banks for international payments as part of their own compliance obligations, and frequently not requested until the payment is already stuck.
Supply it upfront in the same block as everything else. It is one of the commonest reasons a first payment is delayed and one of the easiest to prevent.
Use the address your bank holds rather than a current one if they differ, since the check that matters is against their record.
Intermediary details
Some corridors require an intermediary bank to be named. Your bank knows whether yours does and will tell you if asked directly.
Where it applies and is omitted, the payment usually still arrives, by a longer route, having passed through more hands. That is a cost rather than a failure, which is why nobody mentions it.
Writing the block once
One block of text, containing:
- The account identifier, in full.
- The bank identifier, even where it is optional.
- The account name exactly as your bank holds it.
- The bank's name and address.
- Your own address.
- The reference format you want used.
Send it as text rather than as an image or a document, so it can be copied rather than retyped. Retyping is where errors enter.
Confirming it before the first payment
Ask the payer to read the account identifier back, or to send a screenshot of the entered details before they submit.
Thirty seconds that prevents the one failure in this note that is genuinely expensive, which is money arriving in somebody else's account.
When your details change
A new bank, a new account, a merger that changes identifiers. Tell every payer in writing, from an address they already know, and ask each to confirm.
Do not let the old account close until a payment has arrived at the new one.
The scam this attracts
Changed payment details is the single most common invoice fraud in existence. Somebody impersonates a supplier and sends new account details by email.
Expect your payer to verify a change by a second channel, and offer it before they ask. A payer who accepts changed details without checking is a payer who will eventually accept somebody else's.
Keeping a copy of what they hold
Ask once a year for the details they have on file for you. Compare.
Accounts get set up twice, with a typo in the second, and payments alternate between them for months before anybody notices.
What correct details cannot prevent
A payment being held, converted badly or taken in transit. Every field in this note governs whether the money reaches the right account, and none of them governs how much of it does.
That separation is worth keeping in mind when something goes wrong: an arrival problem is a details problem, and a shortfall is not. They have different causes, different people to ask, and nothing in this note helps with the second.