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Bank Information Fields

Extracting Bank Details

Updated over a week ago

What are the Bank Details

Bank details play a crucial role in financial transactions, and extracting this information accurately from various documents is essential. These details are necessary to ensure the correct transfer of funds between parties. Extracting and handling bank details accurately is a challenging task as the price of error is too high. As the field of finance continues to evolve, the accuracy of bank details extraction will play an increasingly critical role in streamlining financial operations.

Veryfi smart data extraction is heavily trained to identify and extract necessary banking identification, and accounting details from different document types. Bank details fields are part of the Bank Breakdown object, located under Vendor, in JSON response that Veryfi returns you as a result of successful processing.

By default Bank Breakdown may not be available for your user account, so you may need to request access by contacting support@veryfi.com, as additional charges might be involved.

Visit API Documentation for more details

Understanding Bank Details

Bank details and payment information available on invoices, bills, and similar financial documents typically include:

  • Bank Name | vendor_bank_name This is the name of the bank where the recipient of the payment has their account. The name of the bank. Could be part of invoice remittance information.

  • Bank Address | vendor_bank_address The address of the bank branch where the recipient's account is held. This is important for international payments, as it may include the branch's location.

  • Bank Account Number | vendor_account_number The vendor's bank account number. The account number is a unique identifier for the recipient's bank account. This number is used to direct the payment to the correct account.

  • IBAN | vendor_iban (International Bank Account Number): For international payments, the IBAN is a standardized international bank account number used in many countries. It helps ensure that payments are directed to the right account.

  • SWIFT | vendor_bank _swift The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) code is part of the ISO 9362 standards for sending money internationally. The SWIFT code is an international bank code that identifies specific banks. It's crucial for international wire transfers.

  • Routing Number | vendor_bank_number (ABA - American Banking Association): The bank routing number. Could be part of invoice remittance information.. In the United States, the routing number, also known as the ABA number, is used to identify the recipient's bank for electronic transfers and checks.

  • Currency | vendor_account_currency The currency of the vendor bank account if indicated. Provides the ability to support multiple bank accounts for bill pay use cases, e.g., a separate bank account for you to pay in Euros and a separate to pay in US Dollars.

With the data associated with these fields, customers can perform various banking operations such as transferring funds, setting up direct deposits, processing electronic payments, verifying account details, and ensuring secure and accurate financial transactions domestically and internationally.

Bank Details Fields and Application Diagram

The bank information extracted by Veryfi is versatile and can be employed by customers in various scenarios, including those who require it for Bill Pay or AP Automation purposes. It's also valuable for customers whose products are closely related to banking operations, such as fund transfers, direct deposit setup, electronic payment processing, and account detail verification.

Accurate bank details are crucial for preventing payment errors. Sending funds to the wrong account can be time-consuming and costly to rectify. For businesses involved in payment processing, such as Fintech companies and AP automation services, accuracy is of utmost importance. So Veryfi has a very responsible and challenging task to extract these payment instructions correctly.

Field

Description

Insights & Intelligence

Application Type

Bank name

Name of the financial institution

Verification, branding, and identification

Fintech apps, banking systems

Bank number

Unique identifier for a specific bank

Internal routing and identification

Banking systems, transaction processing

Routing number

Nine-digit code identifying US financial institutions

ABA routing, routing verification

Automated payments, direct deposits

Account number

Unique identifier for an individual bank account

Account differentiation and identification

Fund transfers, account management

IBAN

International Bank Account Number

Standardized account identifier

International fund transfers, banking systems

SWIFT / BIC

Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication code / Bank Identifier Code

Global bank identification

International wire transfers, banking systems

What to look for?

Bank fields are the different pieces of information that banks store about their customers. Veryfi’s powerful OCR API can extract bank fields from common financial documents. So you'll find that on a lot of invoices, somewhere at either a footer across the bottom, on the left, or anywhere else, the Payee embeds Bank Details and payment instructions (also called Remittance Information on who you pay to) for the Payer.

For Bank Fields description, requirements, and limitations, go to Veryfi API Docs.

Bank Details & Different Document Types

Bank details can be found in various financial documents, including Invoices, Bills, Remittance Advice, and International transfer documents (intent and confirmation), etc.

Challenges Extracting Bank Details

Language and Region Differences

Bank details can vary based on region and document type. Some invoices may contain multiple sets of bank details, which makes extraction more complex. In international documents, the presence of different currency codes further complicates the process. Some regional and Language specifics may be a challenge for accurate extraction.

SWIFT, IBAN , bank address, and sort code, are elements used in financial transactions, but their format and usage can vary from one country to another.

Is SWIFT vs Sort Code is same thing?

No, a sort code and a SWIFT code (also known as a BIC - Bank Identifier Code) are not the same. They serve different purposes and are used in different contexts in the world of banking and financial transactions. While both sort codes and SWIFT codes are used for bank identification, sort codes are specific to the UK and Ireland and are used for domestic transactions within these countries, while SWIFT codes are used internationally to facilitate cross-border financial transactions.

NOTE: It is expected to extract sort code to vendor_bank_number

📝 If something does not work for you out of the box we suggest exploring custom data extraction with custom_fields
Custom Fields Article
Custom Data Extraction Article


Data Extraction Confidence

Veryfi should be mature with extracting Bank Details from finance documents in English with USD/CAD/EU currency. Less accuracy can be expected for documents in different languages and currencies especially if Bank Details key-value pairs are written in a different language. Recently (Autumn 2023) there have been multiple updates and improvements in the extraction of Bank Details.

To be up to date with model release notifications sign up here.

Please keep in mind, that model is confident in extraction for frequent vendors representing particular domains & industries involved. For low-volume cases, extraction results may not be stable until confidence is gained by providing more data for similar cases. Each domain/industry/vendor may have its own unique challenges, formats, and terminology.

Confidence in Frequent Vendors:

  • When it comes to vendors that are frequently encountered within a particular domain or industry, the model tends to exhibit a higher level of confidence in its extraction results.

  • This confidence is a result of the model being extensively trained and fine-tuned on data related to these commonly encountered vendors. It has learned the nuances, patterns, and typical data structures associated with these vendors.

Challenges of Low-Volume Cases:

  • In contrast, when dealing with low-volume cases or vendors that are less commonly encountered, the model's confidence in extraction results may not be as stable.

  • Low-volume cases present unique challenges because the model may not have had the opportunity to encounter and learn from a sufficient amount of data related to these vendors. Consequently, it may struggle to accurately interpret and extract data from such cases.

How to Report Mistakes in Data Extraction?

If you continue to encounter issues with reading specific parts of your documents, we are here to assist you.

Please reach out to our support team at support@veryfi.com. Provide us with comprehensive details and context regarding the problem.

  • Collect examples of issue (Document ID and source document files)

  • Provide expected results

  • Provide background on Severity and Priority

Please note that depending on the cause of inaccurate extraction Veryfi may not be able to fix it immediately, but will use your report as a reference for future improvements.

Before reporting data extraction cases to support, please exclude indirect causes like document type, image quality, invoice layout, structure, language, and vendor specifics.

Use this article as a self-service debugging guide What Affects ML Accuracy.

Our goal is to ensure that Veryfi consistently delivers accurate results, and we appreciate your proactive engagement in helping us achieve this objective.


Please, reach out to support@veryfi.com if you have any questions.

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