How to find Ulster Bank card account IBAN? (Need it to pay the bill online!)

Fogmatic

I know I could probably ring/online chat to Ulster Bank, but for lots of reasons it's easier for me this way (and could save someone a bit of time if they have the same problem).

A nice human being from Ulster Bank rang us recently, to explain that online payment to their credit cards needs setting up again, because they now have to include said account's IBAN. She gave me instructions, of which I scribbled down a summary. She invited questions, but I didn't have any, as it sounded straightforward.
Which it was - until it came to finding the IBAN.

As instructed, I'd gone to Manage Payees (they'd disappeared, as expected) and then Add Payee. I entered the name on the account, and waited for the boxes below to be automatically populated with the IBAN etc (as I'd been told), but they weren't.
The website's Help section said the IBAN can be found both on paper statemenrs and online. So while on the website I viewed the account details, where Help said the IBAN and BIC (whatever that is) numbers are. Except they weren't there.
So I looked at the bottom of the paper statement (as instructed by Help), and accordingly there is a long code at the bottom of the credit card statement. So I tried that, but it was rejected; ditto without the spaces, then without the <s (and it was still longer than the 22 characters (I think) that it's supposed to be).

Any ideas out there?

TMC99

Are you paying the card from a UB account or from another banks website/app account?

padyjoe

Go here IBAN calc , put in your branch code and account number and you are good to go! Simples.

coylemj

padyjoe wrote: »

Go here IBAN calc , put in your branch code and account number and you are good to go! Simples.

It's the credit card IBAN the OP is looking for, not his own.

OP, get the sort code and account number (not your card number) from the Giro payment slip at the bottom of a paper statement and put them into that converter - link as supplied by previous poster. When registering them as a payee, you normally include your credit card number in the 'Reference' field - that's so they know who's paying.

coylemj

I agree that the 8-digit account number is not that easy to find. On my Mastercard statement, the destination sort code and (8 digit) bank account number are in OCR (optical character reader) characters at the foot of the page, similar to how they appear on a cheque. Only when I found them there was I able to locate the account number in plain text on the rest of the page, it was pretty hard to find otherwise.

Fogmatic

Yes, it's the IBAN of my own Ulster Bank credit card account I meant (to set up online payments to it from another Ulster Bank account of mine). Sorry for any confusion.

Anyway, thanks everyone! The IBAN calc did the trick.

After a bit trial-and-error, that is.
So, in case anyone else wants to know;
The IBAN generator requires the sort code and account number.
It said my sort code was incorrect, so I tried it without the dashes (making it 6 characters), and that worked.
It then requires an 8-digit account number, and I couldn't ascertain where it is on my credit card paper statement (including the giro slip).
Having searched the Ulster Bank site's Help section for where to find the account number on a paper credit card statement, the only illustration was re current accounts, and all I could find about credit card ones was "The account number for credit cards is the full 16-digit card number".
So tried that, but no joy (either without spaces or with).
So back to the Giro slip, which, as coylemj points out, shows the sort code. That's very clear, but the account number is less so. There's a long string of characters & spaces at the bottom, with several groups of characters. The most likely-looking ones were 7 digits including a +, and 9 digits including a <. What worked for me was the latter excluding the <. It's the right-hand group (ignoring some further oddments).
The 'IBAN checker' (or similar) on the Ulster Bank website doesn't generate them (it's for recognising a genuine IBAN, if I remember right that is - I did too much going round the houses to make notes of everything!).

I would have thought a bank website could make this kind of thing clearer (and save themselves some time answering questions as well).
(Perhaps they think a 'user friendly' website means steering clear of details, big words etc? Or maybe it was only tested by insiders who already know all the answers?)

Fogmatic

Thanks for your quick response, coylem! (I cross-posted while editing).
Even with knowing my account number now, I can't find it elsewhere on the statement! (But mine's Visa - maybe yours is Mastercard, and that makes a difference?

coylemj

My Mastercard is from Bank of Ireland so when I added the card as a payee on my BoI online account, I didn't need the Mastercard bank account details, just my CC number so obviously all BoI credit card holders pay to the same account.

Fogmatic

Ah, the 2 banks must do things differently then.

The info on my statement seems to work the other way round, too. My sort code's in plain text (with the dashes, as on cheques), in the bottom but one section of the giro slip, with 'Sorting code number' under it. And a plain text account number is still nowhere to be found.

(And perhaps the BOI website doesn't constantly nag you to install a superflous CPU-hogging pest of a security program called Rapport?)