Shaba Number

Before the International Bank Account Number, there were different national standards for identifying bank accounts, which was confusing for some users. This often resulted in the loss of transaction path information in payments. These account numbers also did not have check digits (structure accuracy control), which increased the possibility of errors in transferring funds.

In 1997, to address these problems, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) published a new standard called ISO 13616. According to this standard, international account numbers were introduced under the name IBAN, which stands for International Bank Account Number, for international transactions.

The ISO organization improved this standard in 2003 and 2007. In 2007, the ISO 13616 standard was divided into two parts. In the second part (ISO 13616-2:2007), many improvements were made and it became the accepted standard for international money transfers. The official name of this part of the standard is SWIFT, which is currently the most widely used international financial transaction method.

In Iran, since January 1, 2007, the Central Bank of Iran has made the use of Sheba mandatory for foreign exchange transfers. This number is also used in domestic interbank transactions.

This algorithm can also be used to validate the IBAN code of other countries; because, as mentioned, the Sheba code generation algorithm, or in other words, the IBAN code, is international and countries cannot change the algorithm for generating this code.