Ever wanted to change banks but then ditched the idea because it was too hard? When you change banks, you need to change a heap of other things too. Where your salary gets deposited, scheduled transfers, direct debits and loan payment to name a few.

Why couldn’t this be just as easy as porting your mobile number to another carrier? Joshua Gans has explored the “switching cost” of changing banks on his blog before and more recently. After thinking about how bank account numbers work, I landed on what might be a simpler solution. Simpler in theory but the challenge is to get the banks to implement it.

Firstly, let’s try to understand what these account numbers mean …

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