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SWIFT code

A SWIFT code, formally a BIC, is an 8- or 11-character identifier for a financial institution in the SWIFT network. It routes an international payment to the correct bank, and where it is 11 characters the last three identify a specific branch. Paying a mainland Chinese supplier in CNY usually needs a CNAPS code alongside it, because SWIFT identifies the bank and CNAPS identifies the branch.

Also known as: BIC, SWIFT/BIC, Bank Identifier Code

What the characters mean

An 8-character code is a bank's head office. An 11-character code adds a branch. Both are valid; which one a supplier gives you depends on what their bank told them, and either can be correct on an invoice.

  • First four — the institution. BKCH is Bank of China.
  • Next two — the country. CN for mainland China, HK for Hong Kong.
  • Next two — the location, usually a city.
  • Last three, optional — the branch. XXX explicitly means the head office.

There is no IBAN for a Chinese account

A buyer paying from the UK or the euro area is used to being asked for an IBAN, and their bank's payment form usually asks for one first. China has no IBAN system, and neither does Hong Kong. There is nothing to supply, the supplier is not being evasive, and a form that insists on the field is a form aimed at a different corridor.

What replaces it is the combination this page is about: the account number, the account name exactly as registered, the SWIFT/BIC, and — on a renminbi payment into the mainland — the CNAPS code. Four fields where a European payment needs two.

The practical consequence is a delay rather than a loss. A buyer who cannot find the IBAN field's answer often stops and asks the supplier again, which is a day; a buyer who types the SWIFT code into the IBAN field gets a validation error, which is better.

Checking one before you send

Two things can be checked without a lookup site, and between them they catch most of what goes wrong:

  • Characters five and six are the country. CN for mainland China, HK for Hong Kong. A code whose country letters disagree with the address on the invoice is wrong before anybody sends anything — and a Hong Kong code on an invoice from a Shenzhen factory is the specific shape worth stopping for.
  • It is eight or eleven characters, never another length. Nine is a typo; twelve is two fields run together.

Look-up sites are worth using only to confirm what the supplier told you, never as the source — the same rule as the CNAPS code, and for the same reason: the receiving bank reconciles against its own record, not against a directory.

Why it is not enough on its own for China

SWIFT gets the money to the bank. On a domestic Chinese payment the bank then needs to know which of its branches holds the account, and that is what the CNAPS code carries. A payment with a correct SWIFT code and a missing or wrong CNAPS code frequently comes back, days later, minus fees.

This catches people out because the same payment to a Hong Kong or Singapore account needs no equivalent. The mainland is the exception, not the rule.

Getting it right the first time

Ask for the SWIFT code, the CNAPS code and the account name as they appear on the supplier's business licence and bank record, not as typed into an email. A code retyped by hand into a WeChat message is the single most common source of a rejected first payment.

Then send a small test payment before the deposit. A hundred dollars bounced costs a few days. A sixty-thousand-dollar deposit bounced costs the production schedule.