A company paying a supplier in another country decides, in field 71A of the payment message, who bears the banks' charges. OUR: the sender pays all of them. SHA: the sender pays its own bank and the beneficiary pays the rest. BEN: the beneficiary pays all of them. In ISO 20022, now the standard for cross-border payment messages, the same choice is the charge bearer field of the pacs.008 message, ChrgBr: DEBT for OUR, SHAR for SHA and CRED for BEN. A fourth code, SLEV, is used only within schemes such as SEPA, whose own rules decide the charges. We measured what each one actually did.
We took a sample of cross-border payments in US dollars sent from January to October 2026 whose instruction stated the charge code, and compared the amount sent with the lowest amount the payment was settled at on its way to the beneficiary's bank, leaving currency conversions aside. 308 payments were analyzed: 199 sent OUR, 93 SHA and 16 BEN. Payments rejected on the way are left out.
US dollar payments that arrived short, by charge code
BEN: 16 of 16
SHA: 87 of 93
OUR: 16 of 199
SHA: the supplier was almost always paid short
87 of the 93 SHA payments arrived short. Most lost between 25 and 75 dollars (66 of the 87), the median was 50.00, and three lost 100 or more. The cut grew with the payment, but not in proportion: a median of 20 dollars on payments under 10,000 dollars (11 of them), 52.50 on payments of 10,000 and above (76). Against the payment it is small, under 0.5% on 77 of the 87, but an invoice settled 50 dollars short stays open until someone chases the difference.
All 16 BEN payments arrived short as well, by 15 to 62.50 dollars, which is what BEN asks for.
OUR: 183 of 199 arrived whole
Under OUR the sending bank takes on every charge along the way, and mostly that held: 183 of 199 arrived whole. The 16 that did not lost a fixed amount, not a share of the payment. 13 of the 16 were exact multiples of 5 dollars, 15 were 5 dollars or more, the largest was 105, and the four payments of 100,000 dollars or more lost 10 dollars or less each. That is the shape of a flat charge per payment, not of a percentage.
In euros, none of the 67 OUR payments in the same period, sent through 13 banks, arrived short.
Where the OUR shortfalls were taken
The sending bank does not take the charges of the other banks out of the payment: it pays them itself, but only to the banks it has an arrangement with. A bank further along the way that is not covered takes its fee out of the amount it passes on. That is where all 16 shortfalls happened, at a bank after the sending bank, and never at the sending bank itself.
So the length of the chain decides it. Where no more than two banks handled the payment, 13 of 193 arrived short. Where a third bank handled it, 3 of 6 did.
US dollar payments sent OUR that arrived short, by the number of banks that handled them
One or two banks: 13 of 193
Three banks: 3 of 6
That is why the sending bank matters as much as the charge code. A bank that holds its dollar account with a large correspondent, which credits the beneficiary's bank itself, leaves no bank in between to take a fee. In this sample, the sending bank with the widest correspondent network sent 14 payments OUR, and every one arrived whole. Before relying on OUR, ask your bank which bank it sends dollars through, and whether that bank pays your supplier's bank directly.
Guaranteed OUR for dollar payments
Some banks sell a stronger version of OUR for dollar payments, sometimes called OUR-OUR, guaranteed OUR or full value: for a fixed surcharge, the sending bank covers every bank in the chain, including those it has no arrangement with, so that the full amount reaches the beneficiary's bank. HSBC Innovation Banking added a Guaranteed OUR surcharge of 20 dollars per payment for dollars from November 2024, on top of its fee for the payment itself. DBS in Indonesia lists a Full Amount Guarantee for dollar payments sent OUR, at 25 dollars.
Set against the numbers above, the surcharge is paid on every payment, while a plain OUR payment arrived short 16 times in 199, with a median loss of 10 dollars. It is worth paying where an invoice must be settled to the cent, or where the payment will pass through more than two banks.
How long it took
Speed is already well measured: the FSB's 2025 progress report on cross-border payments puts 54.6% of payments of 100,000 dollars or more credited within an hour of being sent, and 93.2% within one business day. Of the 308 here, 223 carry a confirmation of the credit: 117 within an hour of the first bank in the chain handling the payment, 188 within a day, 15 after more than two days. A payment held for a manual compliance check, because the sender or the beneficiary has a potential match on a sanctions or watch list, can take far longer than any of these.
The route, the arrival window and the cost of a payment can be seen before it is sent, in our payment planning tool.