Strictly speaking it’s the invoice number that’s encoded into the structured code, which then maps to an account. That’s how the expected amount is known. It’s a good system so long as there is also an analog option if bugs happen, the grid goes down, or if a cyber attack brings down the bank or invoicing system and the tech fails. You can’t fix those things in a day. Bug hunts can take weeks to find and more weeks to resolve and recover the data. And the engineers are not cheap. When there is an analog option you can always add unskilled workers cheaply and even train them on-the-fly if needed. You can’t just throw more people in to accelerate work on a software problem. But with analog systems you can. You can scale them up quickly with temporary contractors. Even if all the info systems are down you can accept cash and make paper records until the info system is recovered. When a software dev is hired, they actually cost the employer money for training and the time it takes them to understand the complex code and quality systems. Some say it takes 3 months before a developer becomes productive enough to offset their own cost. Some say that crossover point is closer to a year. If a software dev CV shows that they left a job short of working 3 years in a position, employers will often reject them because that’s not enough time to have made the company a worthwhile profit.