Sort code

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Sort codes are the domestic bank codes used to route money transfers between financial institutions in the United Kingdom, and formerly in Ireland. They are six-digit hierarchical numerical addresses that specify clearing banks, clearing systems, regions, large financial institutions, groups of financial institutions and ultimately resolve to individual branches. In the UK they continue to be used to route transactions domestically within clearance organizations and to identify accounts, while in Ireland (a founder member of the Euro) they have been deprecated and replaced by the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) systems and infrastructure. The sort code is usually formatted as three pairs of numbers, for example 12-34-56. It identifies both the bank (in the first digit or the first two digits) and the branch where the account is held. Sort codes are encoded into International Bank Account Numbers (IBANs) but are not encoded into Business Identifier Codes (BICs). Sort codes for Northern Ireland branches of banks (codes beginning with a '9') were registered with the Irish Payment Services Organization (IPSO) for both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. These codes are used in the British clearing system and historically in the Irish system.