Commercial Bank of Ethiopia SWIFT code

What the eight characters mean

CBET

The bank. Four letters, assigned when the bank registered with SWIFT.

ET

Ethiopia. The ISO country code.

AA

The location of the registered head office.

If a form insists on eleven characters, add XXX: CBETETAAXXX. The three X characters mean the head office rather than a named branch, and for an ordinary incoming transfer that is what you want.

Worth knowing

CBE is the one Ethiopian bank with a long list of published branch codes. For an ordinary incoming transfer the eight-character head-office code is what you want; the eleven-character forms are used when the sending bank has been told to route to a specific department.

Branch and department codes

CBETETAAIBD

International Banking Department

CBETETAATRY

Treasury Department

CBETETAADOC

Trade Service Center

CBETETAAARA

Arada Giorgis branch

CBETETAADIR

Dire Dawa main branch

CBETETAAFIN

Finfine branch

CBETETAAMEH

Mehal Gebeya branch

CBETETAATEM

Temenja Yaj branch

Use one of these only if you have been told to. Sending to the head-office code is the normal case and reaches the same bank.

What else a transfer into Ethiopia needs

Ethiopia does not use IBAN. If a form asks for one, there is nothing to put in it. What Commercial Bank of Ethiopia needs is the SWIFT code above, the full account number, and the account holder’s name spelled the way the bank holds it. A name that does not match is the most common reason an incoming transfer is held.

Foreign-currency transfers into Ethiopia also pass through the country’s exchange control rules, so the receiving bank may ask the recipient what the money is for before releasing it. That is normal and is between the recipient and their bank.

Verifying a Commercial Bank of Ethiopia payment

A SWIFT code is for money coming in from abroad. For a local Commercial Bank of Ethiopia transfer, where somebody sends you a receipt and you want to know it is real, links.et reads the receipt from apps.cbe.com.et and gives you back what the bank recorded.

Other Ethiopian banks