A number of significant changes impact the Standard ISO 9362 Business Identifier Code (BIC) in November 2018.
The BIC Code structure is defined by the international standard under ISO 9362:2014 and country code ISO 3166-1.
What is the definition of BIC? The Business Identifier Code (BIC) consists of 8 or 11 alphanumeric characters, comprising a Business party prefix (previous institution code), country code, business party suffix and branch identifier. For example, 1000 EUR transfer to USD can cost you as little as 4 EUR with Wise (formerly TransferWise), compared to 28 EUR with a bank. We recommend you use Wise (formerly TransferWise), which is usually much cheaper. This is because banks hide a fee in the exchange rate, which means that you will spend more on international money transfers than you should. When you send or receive an international transfer with your bank, you might lose money on a bad exchange rate and pay hidden fees as a result.
