IBAN Discrimination
IBAN discrimination is a business rejecting a payment or direct debit because the customer’s IBAN is from a different SEPA country than expected. It is prohibited under EU SEPA regulation, which requires any SEPA IBAN to be accepted, yet it persists widely in practice.
If your provider issues, say, a Lithuanian IBAN and your customers are in France or Germany, real-world rejection at checkout or direct-debit setup can cost you a slice of conversions despite the practice being unlawful. Choosing account geography around where you actually collect avoids friction the rules alone do not remove.
An IBAN is the standardised format for identifying a bank account across borders, encoding the country, bank, and account number in a single string.
SWIFT is the global messaging network banks use to instruct cross-border wire transfers; SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) is the EU scheme for standardized euro transfers between member-state banks, typically same-day or next-day.
A multi-currency account holds and transacts in several currencies from a single account, letting a business receive, hold, and pay out in each without a forced conversion on every transaction.
An Electronic Money Institution is a regulated entity, licensed separately from a bank, authorized to issue e-money and provide payment accounts and services.