What Is the Routing Number on a Check?

2018-04-24

All of us live in the great information stream nowadays. The most important information touches upon our private lives and finance, so it is necessary to keep our banking information confidential. However, even this rule has some exceptions. For example, you may see many different codes and your account number on each check. All these figures may say a lot about your bank.

What Is the Bank Routing Number?

A bank routing number is a nine-digit code that you can see on each check of your bank at the bottom on its left side. What do you think it means? This code is considered the best way to define a certain location of the bank where your personal account was opened. This system of identification is used within the United States of America only. It was developed by the American Bank Association in 1910 so that to speed up all transactions between banks of America. However, even after the invention of such technologies as Wire Transfer and ACH, this system was adopted for these operations due to its comfortability.

A bank routing number have 9 characters that identify the Federal Reserve Routing Symbol (the state), ABA Institution Identifier (the code of a certain bank), and the Check Digit (the type of operation to do). Therefore, by reading this number as XXXXYYYC, one may easily find its location with the help of Google search engine or even Google Maps. Hence, as you can see, this information is not confidential. In addition, many banks prefer to publish their bank routing numbers at their sites in the Internet to make them easier to find. Moreover, the presence of a bank routing number means that this bank is a federal one and it is working according to the Federal Reserve.

However, an ordinary user can confuse routing numbers because big financial organizations may have many of them. It may happen so as a result of mergers. In addition, big federal banks may use different routing numbers for different operations.

When Is a Bank Routing Number Used?

A bank routing number can be necessary for an ordinary client in several cases. First, it can be necessary to complete domestic electronic transfers between different banks. In this case, you should know not only the number of your personal account but also a bank routing number of the bank where your personal account was opened.

Second, if you want to transfer money to any other country, a bank routing code is needed as well. In this case, you should know the number of your personal account and the routing number of your bank. However, the big bank may have several bank routing numbers for different types of transactions. Therefore, it would be more helpful to call a contact center of your bank to find out this information. In this case, you can be pretty sure that everything is fine, and your money will be transferred between different banks easily and quickly.