sepa_recipient_alias_generator.py

Generates spelling-variant aliases of an org name, for testing against bank SEPA recipient-name validators (Verification of Payee / IBAN name checks).

Why this exists

Our Verein is officially called "Bits'n Bugs e.V." For years, we ourselves thought it was "Bits'n'Bugs e.V." (with a second apostrophe closing off "n" before "Bugs"), so our own homepage and documents had the wrong name.

At wimp10(2) we got paid via SEPA transfer, and the recipient-name validators at several banks were unhappy about it. We investigated.

Turns out every bank implements these checks its own way -- there's no one standard algorithm (see the script's module docstring for the research trail). But we found a way through: our bank can be given a list of aliases to check an incoming payer-provided name against.

This tool generates that list -- bridging the gap between funky, bank-specific validators and our own long-standing confusion about our own name :)

Usage

./sepa_recipient_alias_generator.py "Bits'n Bugs e.V."

Run ./sepa_recipient_alias_generator.py --help for the full list of checks it runs, the German legal forms (Rechtsformen) it auto-detects, and more examples.

Source

This project lives mainly on code.bitsnbugs.de; it's mirrored to GitHub for visibility, PRs, etc.

Patches welcome.

AI notice

Claude Code helped find some stupid bugs and restructure the code. It's a rather short and straightforward script, so we were able to verify all of it -- but be aware that an LLM has touched this.