Wells Fargo routing number

For a personal checking or savings account, Wells Fargo’s own help pages give one answer: 121000248. The bank lists that same number as its Wire Routing Transit Number, so you need not work out which rail a payer is using before handing it over.

1. 1

   Open Wells Fargo Online

   Sign in, open the account and select “Routing numbers” directly below the account name and account number, as Wells Fargo’s public help page instructs.

2. 2

   Read the bottom of a check

   The routing number is the first group of nine digits along the bottom edge; your account number sits immediately to its right.

3. 3

   Check the number you were given

   Paste any nine digits into the routing number checker on this site to see which institution the Federal Reserve directory maps them to.

4. 4

   Ask the account holder, if you are the sender

   A number remembered from an older transfer is the least reliable source here, particularly for a bank that has absorbed as many institutions as Wells Fargo.

Receiving a wire into a Wells Fargo consumer account costs nothing. Sending one costs $30 in the app or $40 in a branch — and a foreign-currency wire, free in the app, still costs $40 in a branch.

Cutoffs are published as 3:00 pm Pacific for domestic wires, 2:20 pm Pacific for international wires and 4:30 pm Pacific for wires to another Wells Fargo account. Submit before the cutoff and the wire goes that business day; after it, the next.

A routing number alone will not bring money in from another country. The sending bank needs Wells Fargo’s SWIFT/BIC — WFBIUS6S — with your name and address as they appear on your statement. US banks do not issue IBANs, so a sender facing a mandatory IBAN field is on the wrong form; Wells Fargo asks for the SWIFT code and account number instead.

Wells Fargo’s commercial site publishes a second set of codes for its international processing centres, which correspondent banks use for clearing: one shared Fedwire ABA, 026005092, and a separate SWIFT code per centre — PNBPUS33 for Philadelphia, PNBPUS6L for Los Angeles. Personal senders do not need any of them: the pairing Wells Fargo gives retail customers is WFBIUS6S with 121000248.

The fee is only half the cost. Wells Fargo’s own schedule states that its exchange rate, when converting currencies, is set at the bank’s sole discretion and includes a markup — separate from any fee, and never itemised. Glide converts at the mid-market rate and shows the transfer fee before you send.

The opening digits of a US routing number are not arbitrary — they name the Federal Reserve office that clears it. The Fed lists 1210 through 1214 as San Francisco codes in the Twelfth District, and Wells Fargo’s number starts 1210.

1210

Federal Reserve routing symbol — Twelfth District, San Francisco office

0024

Institution identifier for this Wells Fargo record

8

Check digit, derived from the eight digits before it

Change any single digit and the arithmetic stops balancing, which is why a mistyped routing number usually fails validation rather than landing somewhere unexpected.

The FedACH extract behind this directory spreads Wells Fargo across several records and dozens of nine-digit numbers. Of 135 Wells Fargo-labelled records, 103 carry the MAC N9301-041 address string and 128 carry Minneapolis, MN 55479.

So a Minneapolis line here is not evidence you have the wrong bank — it is the address Wells Fargo files with the Fed. It does mean an old directory number proves nothing about what your account uses today.