The National Customer Number is a customer code that the local commercial entity belonging to the OBP, has with a local organisation from which they have to obtain specific product references. As that company is registered with that organisation, they will also have a customer number. This is of course not the case in all countries. It was a requirement of German representatives participating in the preparation of this process, to have as such the IFA code included for companies based in Germany. The reasoning behind, was that IFA is already doing a kind of MNF Legitimacy check including GMP, GDP and MIA references and as such, the fact of having an IFA code is already a strong confirmation of the origin of the requesting OBP.