Every year, tens of millions of cross-border payment messages move between more than 11,500 financial institutions in over 200 countries. If you have sent an international wire transfer and are wondering where your money is, the payment message behind it is what holds the answer.
This guide explains what that message is, which reference numbers matter, and what to do when a payment is stuck.
An MT103 was the standardised message a bank sent to another bank to execute a single customer credit transfer. It is the legacy format. Since November 2025 banks have been required to migrate to pacs.008, the ISO 20022 message that replaced it, and pacs.008 is what carries an international wire transfer today.
Either way, think of it as a digital receipt that travels alongside your money from the sending bank, through any intermediaries, to the receiving bank. It carries structured fields with the sender's details, beneficiary information, amount, currency, value date and, critically, the reference numbers that identify the payment for the rest of its life.
pacs.008 carries more than MT103 could: longer names, structured addresses and fuller remittance information, which means fewer rejections caused by details that had been truncated to fit. A bank that still emits a legacy MT103 has it converted on the network. You will still hear "MT103" used everywhere, and banks still print MT103-style confirmations for customers because the layout is familiar, but the fields map one to one and everything below applies to both.
Not every reference number on your payment confirmation is equally useful. Two of them matter:
The Unique End-to-End Transaction Reference (UETR) is a 36-character identifier, for example eb6305c2-2ef5-4f16-a8e9-e9e14c2a4b3b, assigned when your transfer is created. It has been mandatory on cross-border payment messages since November 2018.
What makes the UETR powerful:
Where to find it: ask your bank. In an MT103 it sits in Block 3, Field 121. In a pacs.008 it is the UETR element inside the payment identification block. Some banks print it on the confirmation; others release it only on request. Learn more about MT103 fields.
Field 20 is a reference of up to 16 characters assigned by the sending bank. It is useful for talking to your own bank, but it has one critical limitation: an intermediary bank may assign its own reference, which makes Field 20 unreliable from end to end.
Use Field 20 when you do not have the UETR and need your sending bank to trace the payment.
Collect these from your payment confirmation or bank statement:
If you do not have the UETR, call your sending bank and ask for it. They are required to hold one for every cross-border payment made since November 2018.
Contact your sending bank's international payments department. Give them the UETR or the TRN and ask for a status. The bank can see where the payment currently stands, including:
On Swift's published 2025 speed data, 90% of cross-border payments reach the destination bank within one hour and nearly all arrive within 24 hours. If yours has been pending for longer than two business days, something needs investigating.
When your bank gives you a status, it will usually be one of these codes. They are ISO 20022 codes, published in the External Code Sets, and they mean the same thing at every bank:
| Status Code | Meaning | What to Do |
|---|---|---|
| ACSP | Accepted, settlement in progress | The payment is moving. Wait. |
| ACSC | Accepted, settlement completed | Funds credited to the beneficiary's bank |
| ACCC | Accepted, credit confirmed | Beneficiary's account credited. Done. |
| RJCT | Rejected | Contact your bank immediately |
| G000 | Accepted and processed | Sent on to the next bank in the chain |
| G001 | Accepted, not yet processed | Queued at an intermediary bank |
| G002 | Pending, credited after the next business day | Weekend or holiday delay |
| G003 | Pending, awaiting documents | Compliance review in progress |
| G004 | Pending, beneficiary details needed | Account mismatch at the receiving bank |
Each definition above is quoted from the ISO 20022 External Code Sets. See the full sourced reference for these codes.
Note: "Accepted, settlement completed" (ACSC) means the beneficiary's bank received the funds. Crediting the beneficiary's account can take additional time, especially where manual compliance checks are required.
If your payment has been pending for more than three to five business days with no clear status, ask your sending bank to open a formal payment investigation. This used to mean free-text MT199 messages passed from bank to bank, a slow process that could take weeks.
Since the ISO 20022 migration, investigations use structured camt messages instead, which can cut resolution time by up to 80% against the old process. Your bank should be able to come back to you in days rather than weeks.
Knowing the common causes helps you diagnose and resolve a delay faster:
Compliance and sanctions screening. Every bank in the chain runs anti-money-laundering and sanctions checks. If your transfer raises a flag, whether on the amount, the corridor or a name match, it can be held for manual review. That usually takes 24 to 72 hours, but a complex case can run to 10 business days.
Intermediary bank processing. Not every pair of banks has a direct relationship. A USD transfer from a European bank to a bank in Southeast Asia might pass through two or three intermediary (correspondent) banks. Each one processes the payment in sequence and each one can add delay, particularly across time zones.
Incorrect beneficiary details. A single wrong digit in the account number, or a wrong BIC code, can bounce a payment and add days or weeks to it. This is one of the things pacs.008 was designed to reduce: banks can now verify beneficiary details before the payment is sent.
Cut-off times and holidays. Banks process cross-border payments in defined windows. A payment submitted after Friday's cut-off will not move until Monday, or later if a public holiday falls at either end.
Charge code mismatches. The charge instruction (Field 71A in an MT103, the charge bearer in a pacs.008) decides who pays the intermediary fees:
Under SHA or BEN, intermediary banks deduct their fees from the amount in transit. That does not cause a delay, but it is usually why the beneficiary receives less than expected.
The migration from MT103 to pacs.008 completed in November 2025. What it means in practice:
On Swift's 2025 data, 60% of payments are credited within 30 minutes and 90% reach the destination bank within one hour. The full process, including the beneficiary bank crediting the account, typically takes one to three business days. Some corridors, or a route through several intermediaries, can take up to five.
This usually means the payment is held at an intermediary or at the beneficiary's bank. Ask your bank for the exact status code. If it shows ACSC (settlement completed), the funds are already at the beneficiary's bank and the beneficiary should contact their bank directly. If it shows G003 or G004, the payment is waiting on additional information.
Not on the network. MT103 was superseded by pacs.008 in November 2025, and banks were required to migrate. A bank that has not fully migrated can still emit an MT103, which is converted automatically. The term stays in everyday use in banking, and banks still print MT103-style confirmations, because the fields map one to one onto pacs.008.
Yes. Ask the bank that sent the payment for a copy of the MT103, or of the pacs.008 confirmation. Some banks provide it at no charge; others apply a small fee. It is the accepted evidence that the payment was dispatched, and it carries every reference number you need. See an example of MT103 fields.
gpi (Global Payments Innovation) is Swift's tracking standard, used by more than 4,000 banks and covering the large majority of cross-border traffic. There is nothing to sign up for: if your bank participates, your payments are already tracked against their UETR. Ask your bank whether they support gpi tracking.
Correspondent banking data, settlement instructions and payment cost intelligence for cross-border treasury operations.