How to make international transfers from TEB

To make international transfers from your account, you need to have the following information:

• The recipient’s IBAN
• The recipient Bank’s SWIFT code
• The recipient’s full name
• The recipient’s address
• The amount of money you will send
• The currency of the money you will send
• Decide who pays the money transfer fees
• Description of payment

For countries that do not use IBANs, instead of the IBAN you will only need their Bank account number and the Bank’s SWIFT Code. If you do not have a SWIFT Code but have a Routing Number, then you can use that, however making transfers without a SWIFT Code is currently not possible in TEB Mobile, only in one of our Branches. To understand routing numbers, please read further explanations below.

How to accept international transfers at TEB

To accept international transfers into your account, the sender needs the following bank account information:

• Your International Bank Account Number (IBAN) – this is the four characters XK05 + your account number. You can find your account number in the account statement which you receive via email every month, or in the TEB Mobile app. To create your IBAN, just copy your account number after following four characters: XK05. An IBAN example would be XK052011002335678901
• TEB’s SWIFT code – this is TEBKXKPR or TEBKXKPRXXX
• Your full name
• Your Address
• The amount of money that will be transferred
• The currency of the money that will be transferred
• Decide who pays the money transfer fees
• Description of payment

If the sender’s bank requests any details of a correspondent bank that TEB uses, please request that they the details of one of our correspondent banks below:

Further explanations:

What is an IBAN?

An IBAN is an internationally agreed upon system of identifying payment accounts. It consists of up to 34 alphanumeric characters, based on ISO 13616. It is used in more than 70 countries in the world.

The first two characters are the country code: for Kosovo this is XK. The second two characters are check digits for that country code, for Kosovo that is 05.

The next two characters are national financial institution identification characters: for TEB that is 20. These numbers are defined by the Central Bank of Kosovo.

For illustrative purposes this is the breakdown of a TEB Account IBAN:

Country code and check digits: XK05 + Bank Identification No.: 20 + Account Number:  1234567890123456.

You can read more about how IBANs are set by the Central Bank of Kosovo here: https://bqk-kos.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/International-payment-account-number-structure-and-use-regulations-English-V_7-WBG-CLEAN.pdf.

You can read more about the ISO standard of the IBAN here: https://www.iso.org/standard/81090.html You can find all the IBAN structures on all the countries that use IBANs here: https://www.swift.com/resource/iban-registry-pdf

What is a SWIFT code?

The SWIFT Code is an internationally approved system of identifying financial institutions or business entities. It is regulated by the ISO 9362 standard. It consists of 8 or 11 alphanumeric characters.

The first 4 letters are for the identification of the bank or entity.

The subsequent 2 letters are the two-letter country code (based on ISO 3166-1)

The subsequent 2 letters are for the location code of the institution.

The last 3 letters are optional and are used to identify the branch of the bank or entity.

For illustrative purposes, this is the Breakdown of TEB’s SWIFT Code

Bank Identification: TEBK + Country Code: XK + location of TEB: PR = TEBKXKPR

What about countries that do not use IBANs? For countries that do not use IBANs, Bank account numbers are used in conjunction with routing numbers. Routing numbers are a way of identifying financial institutions a specific country. I.e. in the USA, the ABA routing transit number is a 9-digit number (set by the American Banking Association) which is used to identify the financial institution. In Canada, the routing number is an 8-digit number used to identify the financial institution, and the relevant location of the institution’s branch associated with the recipient payment account. Other countries have similar identification methods.

Why is it necessary to decide who pays for the transfer?

Each Bank that is part of the SWIFT network and uses the SWIFT communication platform incurs costs. Each money transfer order that is sent through the SWIFT network to a financial institution bears a cost of using the SWIFT network. Each bank decides on how to allocate those costs. The costs also depend on the particular Bank’s network of correspondent banks, and their respective price lists.

There are three ways of paying for the transfer: the sender pays the complete transfer costs, the costs are shared between the sender and receiver, or the beneficiary pays the complete transfer costs.

If the sender pays the complete transfer costs, then the costs of an international bank transfer are known and exact.

If the beneficiary pays the complete transfer costs, then the complete costs are not known.

If the money transfer costs are shared between the sender and the beneficiary, then it depends on how many correspondent banks are used in between the sending and receiving banks. It is very difficult for the sender or receiver to know the exact costs of the transfer when costs are shared since most banks have internal automated systems and use many correspondent banks that route money transfers depending on their internal policies or various circumstances.

It also depends on the agreement between the sender and receiver of the money. When the sender pays for the money transfer, the receiver receives the exact money amount that the sender agrees to send. When the costs are shared, the receiver receives the sent money with the deducted incurred money transfer costs.

Money transfer costs are usually be processed based on the institution that receives the money. In the case of TEB, in case of an incoming payment, if the sender has paid all the transfer costs, then the beneficiary (who is a client of TEB) will receive the complete amount that was sent. For incoming transfers for which the costs are shared or paid by the beneficiary (who is a client of TEB), the costs will be charged based on the price list.

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