Fictitious IBAN explained: for credit cards, PSPs and foreign currency

What is a fictitious IBAN?

A fictitious IBAN is an account number that is syntactically valid — it complies with the international IBAN structure and has a correct check digit according to the MOD-97 calculation — but that has not been issued by a bank. It therefore does not belong to a real bank account and is used exclusively within your administration.

StatementBridge generates a fictitious IBAN for sources that do not have an IBAN of their own, so you can still import those transactions into your accounting package in a tidy way.

Which sources is a fictitious IBAN intended for?

Many payment sources do not work with a bank-issued IBAN. A fictitious IBAN is then the solution:

• PayPal — a PayPal balance is not a bank account and has no IBAN.
• Stripe — payouts and balances at Stripe have no IBAN of their own.
• Mollie — payments and payouts via Mollie lack an IBAN per balance.
• Credit cards (AMEX, ICS) — a credit card account has a card number, not an IBAN.
• Foreign currency accounts — accounts in USD, GBP or other currencies often have a foreign IBAN or no IBAN at all, which many packages do not accept.

Why do you need a fictitious IBAN?

Accounting packages link a statement to a bank account based on the IBAN. If the IBAN is missing, or it is a foreign IBAN that the package does not accept, then you cannot import the transactions. Strict importers such as Moneybird moreover require a valid IBAN with the correct structure — an empty or incorrect field leads to a rejected file.

A fictitious IBAN solves this: it is structurally valid and MOD-97 correct, so the package accepts it as an account number and links the transactions to the correct account in your administration.

How does it work in practice?

1. Generate a fictitious IBAN — during the conversion you choose in the import settings to generate a fictitious IBAN. StatementBridge creates a valid, MOD-97 correct IBAN.
2. Create a separate account or journal — set up your own bank or suspense account in your accounting for the source and link the fictitious IBAN to it.
3. Convert and import — StatementBridge places the fictitious IBAN in the MT940 or CAMT.053 file, so the package links the transactions to the correct account.

Use a separate fictitious IBAN per source and per currency

Use a separate fictitious IBAN with its own suspense account or journal for each source and each currency. This keeps the balances separated and lets you reconcile per source. A PayPal balance, an AMEX credit card and a USD account therefore each get a separate fictitious IBAN. Reuse the same IBAN each time for new imports from that same source, so the transactions keep landing on the correct account.

For foreign currency you usually use a fictitious NL IBAN in combination with a separate bank journal in the correct currency, because packages such as Exact Online do not always accept a foreign IBAN.

Watch out with strict importers

Strict importers check not only whether an IBAN is present, but also whether the structure is correct. A randomly made-up number is rejected because the check digit is incorrect. That is why StatementBridge always generates a MOD-97 correct IBAN, so the file is also accepted in a strict package such as Moneybird.