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Ahsan Mukhtar

Albania IBAN

AL·ALL·SEPA

By Awais ImranUpdated October 18, 2026IBAN formats match the SWIFT IBAN RegistryOur methodology

A Albania IBAN is 28 characters long and Albania is in SEPA.

AL and two check digits open every Albania IBAN; its remaining 24 form the BBAN (Basic Bank Account Number).

Example Albania IBAN

Electronic format

AL47212110090000000235698741

Print format

AL47 2121 1009 0000 0002 3569 8741

IBAN structure for Albania

Country code

AL

Check digits

47

Bank code

212

Branch code

1100

National check digit

9

Account number

0000000235698741

Total length28 characters

Major banks in Albania

2 banks in Albania that support IBAN-based international transfers:

R

Raiffeisen Bank

I

Intesa Sanpaolo Bank Albania

Format reference: SWIFT IBAN Registry.

Albania IBAN questions

When will instant payments start in Albania?

The Bank of Albania aims for November 2026. At a press conference on 5 August 2026 the governor said TIPS Clone should be operational by November or, at the latest, by the end of that month, after work with Banca d'Italia, the ECB and Albanian banks, and would let Albania process SEPA credit transfers and instant payments.

Which Albanian rules govern euro credit transfers?

A Bank of Albania regulation on the requirements for credit transfers and direct debits in euro, approved on 3 April 2024, which met one of the legal conditions for joining SEPA. A separate regulation on information accompanying fund transfers, drafted with the Financial Intelligence Agency, addressed anti-money-laundering gaps; Albania also transposed the second Payment Services Directive.

How can a sender check that an Albanian bank is licensed?

The Bank of Albania publishes the institutions it has licensed, banks and non-bank financial institutions alike, with a separate list of those whose licences were revoked. Its banks page currently names 12 banks and one foreign bank branch, the Albanian branch of Türkiye's Ziraat Bankası, all operating with domestic or foreign capital.

Albania: lek clearing, euro payments at home and instant payments

The lek is Albania's monetary unit, and the Bank of Albania is both its sole issuer and the only authority licensing and supervising the country's banks. It also operates the lek's payment infrastructure: its 2024 annual report calls AIPS, the Albanian Interbank Payment System, the sole system for settling large-value lek payments in real time, with every bank in Albania, the central bank and the Ministry of Finance taking part.

Retail credit transfers and direct debits in lek are cleared in AECH, the Albanian Electronic Clearing House. The Bank of Albania has offered clearing since 1997; it calls AECH SEPA-compliant, clears payments in sessions and settles each session's net results in AIPS. The central bank and 12 commercial banks take part directly, the Ministry of Finance indirectly.
Euro payments within Albania have their own system. AIPS EURO, set up on 24 January 2022, settles domestic customer payments in euros in real time; before it, they went through correspondent banks. The Bank of Albania says it is increasingly used for small payments and that euro payments through it fall wholly under Albanian customer protection rules.
During 2024 the Bank of Albania worked on moving AIPS, AIPS EURO and AECH to SEPA and ISO 20022 message standards, expecting to finish in 2025. In January 2025, with other regional central banks, it signed a letter of interest at the Bank of Italy in TIPS Clone, an instant payment system modelled on the ECB's TIPS.

Sources: Bank of Albania: Annual Report 2024, payment systems; Bank of Albania: AECH, Albanian Electronic Clearing House; Bank of Albania: press conference Q&A (5 August 2026); Bank of Albania: licensed banks.