New Zealand bank account prefix

Background

The origins of the format lay in the establishment of the Databank Systems Limited, a company set up by a consortium of competing banks New Zealand, to provide computing resources (development and operational) for the consortium members.

Bank codes are coordinated by Payments NZ who administer the Bulk Electronic Clearing System (BECS). The scope of BECS includes direct debits, automatic payments, bill payments, and direct credits. Payments NZ also administer the following payment systems in New Zealand:

Format of account numbers

Account numbers are generally presented in the format:

where B is the bank number (2 digits), b is the branch number (4 digits), A is the account number (7 digits) and S are digits of the suffix (2 or 3 digits). Where a bank displays the suffix as two digits, a leading zero is added to pad the suffix to three digits; i.e. BBbbbb-AAAAAAA-SS becomes BBbbbb-AAAAAAA-0SS.

This format allows customers to have a single account number with differing suffixes for multiple accounts of differing types. This does not include credit card and loan products.

Account number prefix

Bank accounts are prefixed with six digits, two indicating the bank and four which indicate the branch. The table below shows which banks are allocated which bank prefix. A current list of branches as their associated bank/branch numbers is available for download from the Payments NZ website.

Account number body

The account body consists of seven digits, right adjusted and padded with zeroes if necessary. The last digit of the body is a check digit which can be validated using a modulus algorithm.

Account number suffix

The table below shows the account number suffixes as introduced by Databank Systems Limited from 1969.