KID (Kreditor Identification Number)

KID, short for Kreditor Identification Number (or Kundeidentifikasjon in Norwegian), is a payment reference number used mainly in Norway to link an incoming payment to the correct invoice and the correct customer. It's printed on the giro stub at the bottom of a typical Norwegian invoice, and when a customer pays that invoice through their bank, the KID number travels along with the payment so the receiving business can match it automatically to the right open item in their accounts.

Without something like KID, matching incoming payments to invoices at scale becomes a genuinely manual, error-prone job. A business receiving hundreds or thousands of payments a month can't realistically rely on customer names or free-text references alone to reconcile who paid what. KID solves that by embedding a structured, machine-readable reference directly into the payment itself, and Norwegian banks are generally set up to read and validate it automatically as part of standard payment processing.

How A KID Number Is Actually Structured

A KID number is made up entirely of digits, no letters, and can run anywhere from 2 to 25 digits long depending on how the issuing business has configured it. The final digit is always a check digit, typically calculated using a modulus 10 formula, which lets the receiving bank confirm the reference wasn't mistyped or corrupted somewhere along the way before the payment is processed.

Why KID Matters For Payment Reconciliation

For a business issuing regular invoices, a valid KID reference means an incoming bank transfer can usually be reconciled without a human checking anything manually. That's a meaningful efficiency gain at volume, particularly for businesses issuing recurring invoices where the same customer might generate dozens of payments over a year. Payments submitted without a valid KID reference, or with one that fails the checksum, generally require manual follow-up to figure out which invoice they're actually meant to settle.

KID And The Cost Of Payment Processing

Because KID enables clean, automated reconciliation, some Norwegian banks apply lower transaction fees to payments that include a valid KID reference compared to those that don't. This reflects how reduced processing overhead for the bank can sometimes translate into a lower fee for the payment initiator, depending on the bank's own pricing structure.

KID In The Context Of Electronic Invoicing

As Norway has moved further toward structured electronic invoicing, particularly through the EHF format used across Peppol networks, KID has kept its role rather than being replaced by newer invoicing standards. In an EHF invoice, the KID reference typically appears as a specific payment ID field within the structured XML data, meaning the reference carries through cleanly from invoice issuance to payment settlement without needing to be re-entered or re-keyed anywhere along the way.

How KID Compares To References Used Elsewhere

Other countries have their own equivalents built around similar logic. Sweden uses an OCR reference number for much the same purpose, and various IBAN (International Bank Account Number) based systems elsewhere rely on structured remittance fields instead. None of these are directly interchangeable with KID, and a business operating across Nordic markets generally needs to support each country's own reference format rather than assuming one structured reference standard works everywhere.

Practical Considerations For Businesses Using KID

Businesses issuing invoices with KID references need systems capable of generating a valid checksum for every reference produced, since a single miscalculated digit can cause a payment to be rejected or misrouted. For companies handling international payment flows that touch Norway alongside other markets, it's generally worth confirming with a banking partner or payment provider exactly how KID references need to be formatted and passed through, rather than assuming a generic remittance field will be read the same way.