Roll number validation

Roll numbers are used in the United Kingdom to identify individual accounts at a financial institution other than a bank, typically a building society or credit union. The owning institution uses head-office collection accounts from another bank to collect the payments for all roll number accounts. Therefore the account details are the sort code and account number of the collection account and the individual account roll (or reference) number.

If a collection account needs a roll number, you get a warning when you validate the account details.

When validating roll numbers, Bank Wizard only validates the basic format of the sort code and account number. To perform a complete validation on the account details, you must run a standard validation for the United Kingdom.

Roll numbers are 1 to 18 characters and can include A to Z, 0 to 9, / . and -. For example: CXJ-K6 897/98X

Roll number format hint

Using the function BWIGetString with item BWI_UK_RN_HINT, you can return a format hint for the roll number. This string is made up of characters that specify what is allowed in each position within the roll number, as follows:

a - any alphabetic character [A-Z]

b - any alphabetic character [A-Z], digit [0-9] or Bacs-allowed punctuation [SPACE .,/-&]

e - any alphabetic character [A-Z] or digit [0-9]

m - any positive digit [1-9]

n - any digit [0-9]

o - any digit [0-9] or [SPACE]

x - any digit [0-9] or [X].

Also any character allowed by Bacs can be explicitly stated. If a roll number can have more than one format, multiple formats are returned separated by colons (:).

For example:

nn/aa - valid roll numbers would be 01/ED and 99/FZ

nn/aa;nnn-aax - valid roll numbers would be 01/ED, 012-BC0 and 456-FGX.

To fully validate roll number accounts

1. Make sure the account can exist by calling the validate service, supplying the sort code and account number of the collection account and set the check type to VALIDATE_ONLY.

This returns all errors, warnings and information messages to show whether the validation was successful.

If no errors are returned, this returns the IBAN and the branch details.

2. To check the format of the roll number, call the validate service again, supplying the sort code, account number and roll number.

This returns the roll number errors (90 to 92) and warnings (90 to 95) to show whether the format of the roll number is correct.

See also

• Country details
• Field sizes and transposition
• UK additional data