RJCT Status of SWIFT Payment

RJCT - is one of 3 major status codes of a SWIFT payment. It is a short from Rejected - by some reason one of the banks in the chain has decided that this payment cannot be executed and must be returned back to the sender. In this article we will cover key questions about RJCT status code.

Why Is My SWIFT Transfer Rejected?

There are different reasons why international wire transfers been rejected. The most common:

• Wrong account number or beneficiary's name. In some cases wrong address also could lead to rejection.
• Insufficient details in reason of the payment. Banks rely on payment details to make an initial screening of transaction.
• Country-specific requirements for SWIFT payment were not met. Some countries, like UAE, require reason code to put in SWIFT payment details.
• Routing failure: wrong correspondent bank details provided by sender or sender's bank's correspondent was not able to build a path automatically.
• Internal policy of the bank: high-risk geography, questionable sender's bank, high risk of sanctions violation.

Normally, bank returns a short reason of rejection which sender can check with his/her bank. However most of the time not much details provided, for example: “policy”, or, even worse, it doesn't actually match the true reason why it happened.

RJCT Reason Codes: What MS03, AC01 and the Others Mean

When a bank rejects a payment, the RJCT status usually carries a reason code from the ISO 20022 external code set. The same four-character codes travel inside the pacs.002 status message that banks exchange and inside SWIFT GPI tracking. The code is meant to tell you why the payment was returned, but the one you will meet most often, MS03, means the bank did not specify a reason at all. Treat the code as a starting point, not a full explanation.

Here are the reason codes you are most likely to see on a rejected cross-border payment, grouped by what went wrong.

Reason not specified

Account and beneficiary problems

Bank and routing (BIC) problems

Amount and currency

Compliance, regulatory and timing

Sanctions and compliance rejections rarely name themselves. A bank that blocks a payment for a compliance concern will usually return RR04, NARR or a bare MS03 rather than spell out the issue. If a payment to or from a high-risk country is rejected with one of these, contact your bank directly instead of resending, and see our guide on OFAC-blocked transactions.

Will Payment Change a Status After RJCT?

It depends. If you track your payment with Ohmyfin, sometimes you will see the status move back to ACSP as the money makes its way home, and sometimes it stays on RJCT the whole time. Either way, the point that matters is this: unless the payment was stopped by an OFAC, OFSI or similar regulatory block, which is very rare, it returns to the sender automatically. You do not need to do anything to start the return.

Most of the time the funds are back within one week. In difficult cases it can take up to one month from the original transfer date, so please be patient. If a full month passes and the payment still has not come back, ask your bank to run a payment investigation.

One exception to keep in mind: if the payment was sent as a bank-to-bank transfer using MT202 (pacs.009) with a separate cover, both legs have to be cancelled to bring it back, the payment instruction and the cover. If only one of them is recalled, the money gets stuck between the correspondent banks.

Which Bank Has Rejected a Payment?

If sender's bank is a SWIFT GPI participant, sender can ask his/her bank to provide detailed SWIFT GPI tracking of the payment. It contains information about the whole chain and which particular bank has rejected the payment.

If you track your payment via Ohmyfin it is a bit more challenging. Most of the time you have three suspects:

• sender's correspondent bank
• receiver's correspondent bank
• receiver's bank.

In case tracker shows you details from any particular bank (it will let you know which one) you can understand if it successfully passed it or not.

In case tracker doesn't show any details, your only option is to communicate with the banks: sender can ask his/her bank, receiver can ask his/her bank.

How to Resend Your Payment Correctly?

Check beneficiary's details and make sure you put correct account number, name and address. It should 100% match details which beneficiary's bank does have on file.

Put details of your payment. GOODS or INV # is not enough in a modern world of compliance. Bank must be sure it is a legitimate payment. Help them. Examples of proper payment details:

• SPARE PARTS FOR AUTO. INV #, 2023-10-11, CNTRCT #
• PYMNT FOR APARTMENT. FOR PRSNL USE. CNTRCT #

Change beneficiary's correspondent bank. Often banks have more than one correspondent bank for a selected currency. Find the list of correspondent banks and adjust the route.

Change the currency. Usually when you change the currency (from EUR to USD, for example) you change the whole payment chain. Ideally you need the shortest path from a sender to a beneficiary.

Convert your international payment into a local one. Some fintech providers offer netting and local settlement: you top up in one currency and pay out in another over local rails, so the funds never touch SWIFT and no correspondent banks are involved. Where such a route exists, it is often faster and cheaper than repairing the wire.

Not sure which of these will help your payment most? Plan it with Ohm, our AI assistant. Ohm draws on real banking data, cross-border payment rules and payment statistics to tell you which action brings the most value for your specific case, from correcting a detail to changing the currency, switching the correspondent bank or routing around SWIFT.