Today, June 17th, Bulgaria, last country in the European Union, started issuing biometric identity cards,…
The New IBAN of Digital Currency
What is IBAN?
The IBAN is a numbering scheme that was created to identify bank accounts across national borders: it was conceived to unify bank account identification and standardize their format (i.e., country, bank, branch, routing code, and account number). The IBAN was instrumental to achieve compliance with the Travel Rule of bank transfers. IBANs look as follows:
| Country | IBAN example | New Crypto-IBAN |
| Belgium | BE71 0961 2345 6769 | 000-5902781-01-BEL |
| France | FR76 3000 6000 0112 3456 7890 189 | 880692310285-FRA |
| Germany | DE91 1000 0000 0123 4567 89 | T22000129-DEU |
| Greece | GR96 0810 0010 0000 0123 4567 890 | A1679136-GRC |
| Romania | RO09 BCYP 0000 0012 3456 7890 | 1460913400088-ROU |
| Saudi Arabia | SA44 2000 0001 2345 6789 1234 | 1046403927-SAU |
| Spain | ES79 2100 0813 6101 2345 6789 | 99999999R-ESP |
| Switzerland | CH56 0483 5012 3456 7800 9 | E0767052-CHE |
IBAN vs National IDs
A crypto-currency using National IDs as addressing identifiers for accounts is legal-by-design (FAFT and AMLD5), shorter and more familiar to users. A comparison follows:
| IBAN | National IDs | |
| Number of Countries | 69 | > 150 |
| Length of the identifier | 14-34 | 9-12 |
| Familiarity | Cumbersome | Usually memorised |
| Legality | ISO 13616:2007 | National legal codes |
| Cryptographic protection | No | Smartcards/ePassports |