Avoid Hefty Fees:
International wire transfer generally involves a fees both at sending and receiving end. In case of currency conversion, there may be hidden charges because banks would generally give poor conversion rate - these hidden charges can be as high as 3% of the transfer amount. We recommend using service like
transferwise for best conversion rates and lower wire transfer fees.
International Money Transfer: If you want to make an International wire transfer, the sender's bank will ask the Swift BIC Code of the recipient bank along with the account holder's name and account number to initiate the transfer. The first 8 character of the swift code indicates the bank in a particular region e.g.
CTBAAU2S is the bank code for COMMONWEALTH BANK OF AUSTRALIA SYDNEY in AUSTRALIA while the last 3 characters indicate the code for a particular branch in this region (here
XXX is the code for the branch (FOR HEAD OFFICE AND ALL AUSTRALIAN BRANCHES)). XXX indicates the main branch for the bank and is the default case if the last 3 characters are not provided. In most cases, the first 8 characters (here
CTBAAU2S) is sufficient for initiating
International Wire Transfers as the main branch can internally transfer to other branch where the bank account of the recipient is present.
About Swift Code
SWIFT Code stands for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication code. A SWIFT code is also called BIC Code - Bank Identification Code which is used to identify banks uniquely throughout the world.
The SWIFT code is an 8 or 11 alphanumeric characters code that uniquely identifies financial institution. If a SWIFT code is eleven characters, this means that the bank has added a three-digit code to denote a specific branch of a bank.
First 4 characters - Bank Code - Identifies financial institution uniquely (only letters)
Next 2 characters - Country Code (only letters)
Next 2 characters - Location Code (Letters and Digits)
Optional Last 3 characters - Branch Code of a bank ('XXX' for main office) (Letters and Digits)
You can also
find a swift code and other details of any other bank by using below navigator.