The GBO team will be happy to assist you to open your business bank account throughout our wide network of banks, payment processors and financial institutions.
About IBAN Accounts
IBAN stands for International Bank Account Number, and it uniquely identifies a bank account in the digital universe. It is not the same as the bank account number, which is only unique inside a single bank and could represent a different account in a different bank. IBAN identification is used worldwide to identify individual bank accounts.
A virtual IBAN account for a business does not represent its account in a physical bank, but instead, incoming funds will be rerouted through it to an account at a physical bank.
Virtual IBANs are a mechanism that is designed to improve the straight-through reconciliation of
receivables for corporate bank clients. With it, a bank can permit the opening of a set of ‘dummy’ IBAN accounts by its clients. Underlying each of these virtual IBANs is the customer’s actual physical account in the bank’s records, to which the payments made to these virtual accounts are routed.
The bank customer can then assign IBANs to its individual customers so that when one makes an electronic payment it would automatically come into the relevant virtual IBAN account and the account
engine maps the payments straight through to the real account number, enabling the funds to be credited to this physical account without intervention, and instantaneously.
Please Contact us for virtual IBAN accounts
What benefits are derived from a business IBAN account?
For business, a virtual IBAN is a valuable tool, that works to reduce the expense of cross-border transactions. With virtual IBAN, it becomes possible to expand the business into new areas, and at the same time not have to expand back-office costs for handling reconciliation and settlement.
The settlement system that comes with Virtual IBANs offers many advantages over the facilities of traditional banks. IBAN incorporates details of the target account, including country and bank. The SEPA bloc consists of the 27 EU countries plus Norway, Liechtenstein, Iceland, Switzerland, Monaco, and Britain (despite Brexit). For them, IBAN also ensures and checks that all transfer details are valid that the transaction can be executed.
Setting up Virtual IBAN accounts will reduce the fees that banks charge for setting up accounts. It will no longer be necessary to open bank accounts in multiple countries. A single master account will allow multiple virtual IBAN’s to be linked to this physical account.
Virtual IBAN’s generally facilitate savings on currency exchange rates, which can substantially benefit businesses that generate high volumes of small transactions in different national currencies.
How do virtual IBAN accounts operate?
There is no functional difference between a virtual IBAN and the company’s conventional account for a company making a payment. However, virtual IBANs work in several different ways that normal bank accounts cannot duplicate for the party receiving the payment.
For a company receiving payments, IBAN allows the assignment of a separate virtual IBAN to each source, even down to a single transaction level! All virtual IBAN’s that are allocated to clients are linked to the company’s real IBAN in a physical bank. In this way, all the transactions settled through multiple virtual IBAN’s are quickly credited to the physical bank account.
Virtual corporate IBAN accounts act like subaccounts enabling routing of funds between them and a linked master account that is your regular corporate bank account. A virtual business IBAN account for business allows it to do all money movement online so that banking can be done from anywhere and at any time.
Since all movement of funds takes place through the main account, businesses can run their entire operations with just a single physical bank account. This would simplify cash management and how to make and collect payments. It can generate benefits including faster reconciliation and management at a lower cost because hardly any administration activities are required.
Virtual IBAN in the SEPA area
Virtual IBAN providers based in Europe, such as Revolut, Transferwise (now changed to Wise), Payoneer, N26, and Bunq offer online facilities to open a virtual IBAN account within minutes. Many other countries, including the US, Canada, and Hong Kong provide a subset of functions for IBAN.
In the UK the options to open a virtual IBAN account are more or less the same even after Brexit. As well as the EU-based banks, there are still UK-based IBAN supporters, such as providers based in Europe, such as Starling Bank, Monzo, and Monese.
To open a virtual IBAN account is a simple process, once the master account has been set up. All of the leading service providers have fairly simple online portals where the required details can be input and the IBAN accounts are created immediately.
