How important is the beneficiary field in a bank transfer in the Euro zone?

Question

When doing a bank transfer in Germany (and probably by now other countries that have Euro with IBAN and BIC) you have to give a beneficiary. In German, that is either called Kontoinhaber or Begünstigter. While many companies that send you bills tell you what to put there, some do not. I've always just put the company name into that field. Likewise, when buying something on Ebay or just sending money to someone, I would just put their name.

Is that field really relevant? Do banks do something with it? Will the transfer fail or take longer if I have spelling mistakes or put something entirely wrong there?

Answer 1

Nowadays, the field is irrelevant for processing the transfer and completely ignored by the banks.

Pretty much the only purpose it has is for documenting whom you intended to send the transfer to. If you mistakenly send a transfer to the wrong person (which is becoming extremely unlikely with the IBAN due to the builtin check digits) then they are mandated by law to give it back to you. If they refuse to do so and you end up going to court, the content of that field could be important to prove them wrong if they claim they are the rightful recipient.