SEPA coverage · 🇩🇪 DE

Convert Germany IBANs to their BIC

Every Germany IBAN is 22 characters long and starts with DE. The bank identifier embedded inside it is what resolves to a BIC/SWIFT code, the bank's name and address, and its SEPA reachability.

22
IBAN length
characters, fixed
DE
Country code
ISO 3166-1
EUR
Currency
eurozone account
18
Structure
BBAN characters after the check digits

The Germany IBAN format

Example of a valid Germany IBAN:

DE89 3704 0044 0532 0130 00

Structure of a Germany IBAN, segment by segment
Segment Length Example Meaning
Country code2DEAlways DE
Check digits289ISO 7064 mod-97 checksum over the whole IBAN
Bank code (Bankleitzahl)837040044Numeric code identifying the German bank and branch
Account number100532013000Numeric account identifier, zero-padded

Germany’s 8-digit Bankleitzahl identifies both bank and branch, and the Bundesbank publishes the official BLZ→BIC mapping — the canonical source for deriving a German BIC from an IBAN.

How to get the BIC from a Germany IBAN

01

Validate the IBAN

Check the length (exactly 22 characters for DE) and the ISO 7064 mod-97 checksum. Both are local computations — no lookup needed yet.

02

Extract the bank identifier

The bank code (bankleitzahl) (8 characters) inside the BBAN identifies the institution holding the account.

03

Resolve it to a BIC

Map the bank identifier to the institution's BIC via registry data — or send the IBAN to the API and get BIC, bank details and SEPA flags in one response.

Resolve it with one API call

Send the IBAN to POST /v1/convert and get back the BIC, bank details and the four SEPA reachability flags. Invalid and not-found lookups are always free.

curl https://api.iban2bic.com/v1/convert \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ibk_live_xxx" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "iban": "DE89370400440532013000" }'

Germany IBAN — frequently asked

Other SEPA countries

Keep reading

Resolve Germany IBANs programmatically

BIC, bank details and SEPA reachability for any DE IBAN — €0.009 per successful call, failures always free.