Canada Local Transfer Guide

What is a financial institution number and a transit number in Canada?

Airwallex supports CAD Local transfers via Electronic Fund Transactions (EFT), and requires a 3-digit financial institution number (bank code) and a 5-digit transit number (branch code) as routing information to identify the bank and the branch.

Please kindly ask your beneficiaries to always confirm this information with their banks, for inaccurate values may lead to transactions to the wrong accounts, and we cannot guarantee refunds in such events due to local clearing system rules.

You may encounter a single “routing number” for a Canadian bank account in one of the two formats below, each composed of both the financial institution number and the transit number. Please refer to the following instructions to understand how you can obtain our required information from them.

• 9-digit format like 0YYYXXXXX: a leading zero followed by the 3-digit financial institution number (YYY) and then the 5-digit transit number (XXXXX). This is the routing number format for the EFT system.
• 8-digit format like XXXXX-YYY: the 5-digit transit number (XXXXX) followed by the 3-digit financial institution number (YYY), connected with a hyphen “-”. This is usually used on MICR-encoded documents, for example, a Canadian cheque.

Where to find the financial institution number and transit number?

The financial institution number and transit number can typically be found on bank/account statements, official bank websites, and bank-issued cheques. Please see some examples below.

Cheques

You can find the 5-digit transit number and the 3-digit financial institution number at the bottom of a cheque.

Bank statements

The transit number can also be found on bank statements. Please look for the 5-digit number before your account number.

List of financial institutions

You can also refer to the list below for the 3-digit financial institution numbers of Canadian local banks.