Poste Italiane accounts being similar to our historic 9 digit National Girobank accounts (and their Eurocheques) before they morphed into bank accounts with standard 8 digit account numbers. Many European postal administrations ran banking services in paralel to traditional banks, but over the years more and more have been wound up and replaced by accounts connected to the main banking system. The Eurocheques were great as whatever national postal system issued them they were in a common format and you wrote the currency next to the amount, i.e. GBP etc.