Fun playing with banks

[The Beez]

Hi 4tH-ers!

Now the triple library is ready I can swiftly act to Dutch developments in the financial world. So what is the case? The Dutch banks were obliged to switch to the so-called IBAN number (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Bank_Account_Number) which contains some additional information concerning banks and countries where they reside.

The point is, the current account number is expanded by a country code, a bank code and a control number. Of course people still have to do with old account numbers. For that the banks provided a "conversion service".

Recently the following happened (stay with me):
- Banks stopped the conversion service, claiming it costs millions to keep 'em running;
- They say people should all have converted by now (so you're stupid or backward if you still have use for old numbers);
- They say you shouldn't use alternative sources on the Internet (because of fraud - in fact, they implicitly say that ALL conversion services are fraudulent, since they don't state which ones you CAN trust);
- They don't offer ANY alternative - not even offline.

So, with my triple precision library and the checker I made earlier it just took me an hour to make an alternative. You have to know the bank involved, but you can select it from a long list (converted with the new CSV2XLS 4tH converter, so it's a generated table) if you use it interactively. Or in batch if you wish using the batch mode.

I even incorporated all checksums I could get my hands on.

So the big question is: if I can do this in an hour, why can't banks do it? I leave answering that question to you..
Yeah, twitter yourself out of that one, folks..

Hans Bezemer