Italian bank code lookup: the Banca d'Italia registers

An Italian IBAN carries the ABI code in positions 6-10, after the CIN letter and before the five-digit CAB. The Banca d'Italia publishes, as open data under CC BY 4.0, the registers of the banks, payment institutions and e-money institutions it supervises, with their history: when each one was registered, when it was struck off, and the mergers and incorporations that absorbed it.

IBANforge reads both every week, and answers three different things.

A code in force: the holder, named by the Banca d'Italia

curl -X POST https://api.ibanforge.com/v1/iban/validate \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"iban": "IT86W0306901600000000123456"}'

{
  "valid": true,
  "bank_code_holder": "confirmed",
  "bank_code_check": {
    "value": "03069",
    "status": "verified",
    "match": "register",
    "register": "Banca d'Italia, registers of banks, payment institutions and e-money institutions (…)",
    "authoritative": false,
    "institution": {
      "name": "INTESA SANPAOLO S.P.A.",
      "street": "PIAZZA SAN CARLO, 156",
      "post_code": "10121",
      "town": "TORINO",
      "country": "IT",
      "lei": "2W8N8UU78PMDQKZENC08"
    },
    "as_of": "2026-09"
  }
}

The name is served as the register writes it. The register publishes no BIC: the bic block beside the verdict still comes from our composite map (basis: "curated_map").

A code the Banca d'Italia has struck off: retired, with its legal successor, never refused

{
  "valid": true,
  "bank_code_holder": "inferred",
  "bic": null,
  "bank_code_check": {
    "value": "03111",
    "status": "verified",
    "match": "register",
    "authoritative": false,
    "retired": true,
    "retired_on": "2021-04-11",
    "superseded_by": "03069",
    "institution": {
      "name": "UNIONE DI BANCHE ITALIANE SOCIETA' PER AZIONI (IN FORMA ABBREVIATA UBI BANCA)",
      "street": null,
      "post_code": null,
      "town": null,
      "country": "IT"
    }
  },
  "next_steps": [{ "code": "bank_code_retired", "do": "Update the beneficiary details before sending. …" }]
}

Until 25 September 2026 this code answered "Banca Carige": the wrong bank, itself absorbed in 2022. Read the new answer this way:

retired: true and retired_on: the last day the register lists the code for its last holder.
superseded_by: the legal successor by merger or incorporation, followed to a bank in force today (UBI Banca, then Intesa Sanpaolo). It is not necessarily the bank that holds the account: UBI transferred branches to BPER before it was absorbed. A transfer of assets (the liquidation of Banca Popolare di Vicenza in 2017, for example) makes no legal successor, and none is named.
bank_code_holder: "inferred": nobody holds the code today, so checks.bank_code is inferred, not pass. A German code the Bundesbank is retiring stays confirmed, because it is still in the Bundesbank's current file.
No BIC: the one our map used to serve belonged to a bank that no longer holds the code.
Never a refusal: how long an old IBAN stays reachable after an Italian merger is not published anywhere. Ask the beneficiary for their current details.

The official Italian example of the ISO 13616 registry, IT60 X054 2811 1010 0000 0123 456, is one of these codes: ABI 05428, Banca Popolare di Bergamo, absorbed by UBI Banca in 2017, itself absorbed by Intesa Sanpaolo in 2021.

A code the registers do not list: the answer we gave before, never "not allocated"

The Banca d'Italia lists the institutions it registers, not the allocation of the ABI code space. Poste Italiane (07601), the Banca d'Italia itself (01000) and the Italian branches of EU payment institutions (Qonto, 36092) issue real Italian IBANs outside these registers. So an Italian code the registers do not list gets exactly the answer it got before: our composite map, authoritative: false, and never not_allocated.

What the registers publish

Field	In the registers	Note
`name`	yes	as written by the Banca d'Italia
`street` / `post_code` / `town`	yes	the registered office in Italy; for a foreign bank, its Italian branch
`lei`	most codes in force
`bic`	no	the `bic` block stays our composite map's
struck off, date, legal successor	yes	from the history and the list of mergers and incorporations

The filter is by register (banks, payment institutions, e-money institutions), never by code range: payment institutions hold 19xxx codes, and the other registers (asset managers, financial intermediaries) name companies that issue no IBAN.

Freshness and the credit

The registers are re-read every week, and as_of is the edition: the date of the file the Banca d'Italia publishes. The data is open data under CC BY 4.0, which allows commercial reuse on condition of citing the source and indicating the changes. Every answer that uses it carries the credit in bank_code_check.register: Banca d'Italia, Albi ed elenchi di vigilanza, CC BY 4.0, normalised and joined by IBANforge (codes padded to five digits, codes in force selected, struck-off codes dated and joined to their legal successor). See data sources.

The honest limits

We check the ABI code, never the account or its holder.
A miss is not a denial, and a struck-off code is not one either.
The legal successor is not a routing instruction. Ask the beneficiary.
Institution, not branch. The CAB names a branch; we never deny on it.