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🇪🇹 Sending to Ethiopia

ET · ETH

ETB

National format   SWIFT BIC required

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Required information

  • Account number

    Numeric, varies by bank. Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (largest) uses 13-digit accounts. Other banks (Awash, Dashen, Abyssinia) use 10-16 digits. No NBE-mandated unified format.

  • SWIFT BIC

    Beneficiary bank BIC (8 or 11 characters).

  • BIC/SWIFT

    8 or 11-char BIC required for cross-border (e.g. CBETETAA for Commercial Bank of Ethiopia, NBETETAA for NBE). No domestic sort code.

  • Purpose-of-payment code (strongly advised)

    Free-text purpose narrative; NBE Directive FXD/01/2024 sets no inbound purpose code list

  • Beneficiary address

    Match the address template — partial addresses cause holds.

For your end users

Double-check the beneficiary's full name (no initials), account number, and bank SWIFT/BIC against what their bank has on file. International wires can take 1-5 business days and may be delayed by sanctions screening.

Last reviewed by GIB compliance on 2026-05-21. Reference material only.

  • Currency

    ETB

  • Typical settlement

    1-2 business days typical; longer for cross-border with FX or compliance review.

  • SWIFT BIC

    Required

  • Local clearing

    ETHIOPAY / RTGS (National Bank of Ethiopia)

Account format

How beneficiary account numbers are structured for Ethiopia. Failure to match this format is the single most common reason wires are rejected at the destination.

Field Value
Format tier National format
Length Numeric, varies by bank. Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (largest) uses 13-digit accounts. Other banks (Awash, Dashen, Abyssinia) use 10-16 digits. No NBE-mandated unified format.
Validation regex ^[0-9]{10,16}$
Example 1000123456789

Routing identifiers

Which routing codes the wire-creation API call must include for Ethiopia.

Field Value
SWIFT BIC Required
BIC/SWIFT Required
Format 8 or 11-char BIC required for cross-border (e.g. CBETETAA for Commercial Bank of Ethiopia, NBETETAA for NBE). No domestic sort code.
Directory ↗ Source
Local clearing ETHIOPAY / RTGS (National Bank of Ethiopia)

Address format

How Ethiopia expects the beneficiary address to appear on the wire. Free-form variations frequently trigger compliance holds.

  1. Recipient Full Name
  2. P.O. Box NNNN OR Street/Kebele + House Number
  3. 4-digit Postal Code (optional)
  4. City
  5. ETHIOPIA
Field Value
Postal code Optional — validated against the format below when provided
Postal code regex ^[0-9]{4}$
Example Abebe Bekele, P.O. Box 1234, 1000 Addis Ababa, ETHIOPIA

Purpose of payment

Put the purpose in the remittance information (<RmtInf><Ustrd>) of the ISO 20022 wire-creation request, as the code format below describes. Requirement: Highly recommended GIB check: a missing or unexpected purpose is reported as a validation warning; the wire is not held.

Not yet confirmed

We have not yet confirmed this country's purpose-of-payment requirement against a central-bank or correspondent-bank source. Including a purpose is recommended. We update these guides as we confirm each country.

Non-standard element

For Ethiopia, the purpose is placed in <RmtInf> (remittance info), not the standard <Purp> element.

Field Value
Code format Free-text purpose narrative; NBE Directive FXD/01/2024 sets no inbound purpose code list
Authoritative source ↗ View source

Operational notes

Field Value
Currencies accepted ETB
Typical settlement 1-2 business days typical; longer for cross-border with FX or compliance review.
Banking holidays ↗ Calendar

Known issues:

  • Heavy FX controls historically created long settlement queues (the 'FX backlog'); NBE liberalized regime via FXD/01/2024 (July 2024) and FXD/04/2026 (effective Feb 12, 2026), moving to market-determined rates and capping bank FX fees at 4% from May 26, 2025.
  • Despite liberalization, residual FX shortage and bank-level FX rationing can still delay settlement of outbound wires for days to weeks — material to dev experience and SLA design.
  • No IBAN; no unified national account format — per-bank validation required.
  • Service exporters can retain 100% of proceeds in forex retention accounts indefinitely (FXD/04/2026).
  • Declaration no longer required for amounts above USD 10,000 on border entry/forex deposit (FXD/04/2026).

Common rejection reasons

Documented patterns that cause this country's banks to return wires. Universal reasons (sanctions holds, missing BIC) aren't repeated here.

Beneficiary name mismatch (initials, abbreviations, punctuation, or transliteration differences from what the beneficiary bank has on file).
Account number format error (wrong length, wrong check digits, or non-standard characters).
Missing or invalid SWIFT/BIC code.
Insufficient remittance information (unclear economic reason for the payment).
Sanctions or compliance hold (OFAC / EU / UN / local screening).
Missing or non-matching NBE FX-permit/import-permit reference for trade-related inbound or outbound wires.
Beneficiary lacks valid FX-retention account for export proceeds (per FXD/01/2024 and FXD/04/2026).
Birr (ETB) is not freely deliverable offshore — wires must arrive in USD/EUR/GBP for FX conversion at the receiving bank.

Validate before you send

Check identifiers before you submit. The IBAN check runs in your browser (format plus the ISO 13616 MOD-97 check digit). GIB's API checks the IBAN format for countries where an IBAN is required. The BIC lookup searches GIB's BIC directory and needs a dashboard login.

BIC lookup

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References

First-party sources — central banks, FX regulators, ISO registries. Always re-verify against these before pushing volume to a new corridor.

Disclaimer

These country guides aggregate information from central banks, regulators, and industry-standard references. Global Innovations Bank reviews them on a rolling cadence and notes the verification date on each page. Payment-corridor rules change between releases, so we cannot guarantee continued accuracy.

Always verify against the primary sources linked in the References section before going live in a new corridor. Re-check applicable sanctions lists (OFAC, EU, UK, UN consolidated, and any state-level requirements) at the time of payment, since designations shift between our refreshes.

For fintech partners on GIB's sponsor-bank rails, these guides do not replace your BSA/AML, KYC, sanctions-screening, or transaction-monitoring obligations under your program agreement with GIB.

Nothing in this material constitutes legal, tax, or regulatory advice, and wire-acceptance decisions remain at the discretion of GIB Compliance and the destination bank.

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