SWIFT transfer: how a bank payment abroad travels

Your bank checks the order, debits your account and sends a payment message to the next bank in the chain. Since November 22, 2025 that message is a pacs.008 in the ISO 20022 standard, the successor of the MT103, as the ISO 20022 migration page sets out. If your bank has no account with the beneficiary bank, it pays through a correspondent that holds the currency, and sometimes through a second one. Each of these intermediary banks screens the payment, books it over its correspondent accounts and passes it on. The beneficiary bank credits the account at the end.

Every payment now carries a 36-character reference, the UETR, that stays the same along the chain. With it your bank can tell you where a payment sits, which SWIFT gpi made possible.

Four parts add up. WorldFirst puts the sending bank's fee at 10 to 25 pounds, each intermediary bank at 15 to 50 US dollars, with one to three intermediaries common, and the currency margin at often 2 to 4 percent of the amount. The beneficiary bank may charge a fee of its own. The margin is the largest part, and it never shows up as a fee line because it sits in the exchange rate.

Who pays which fee is set in the payment: the sender, the beneficiary, or both sides each paying their own bank. A payment arrives short when the beneficiary carries the intermediary fees.

Most SWIFT transfers arrive within one to five business days. The message travels in seconds, and WorldFirst cites Swift data for 2025 that 75 percent of payments reach the beneficiary bank within 10 minutes. The delay sits elsewhere: a cut-off time in the currency's home market, a sanctions name match that stops the payment for manual review, a beneficiary bank that credits in batches, or a wrong account number or BIC that sends the payment back.

A BIC has 8 or 11 characters: four for the bank, two for the country, two for the location and an optional three for the branch, as Airwallex explains. Name, address, IBAN or account number and the BIC of the beneficiary bank are what a bank asks for.

A euro payment from Germany to another SEPA country does not need the Swift chain. It goes as a SEPA credit transfer or as an instant payment, and under Regulation (EU) 2021/1230 it costs the same as a domestic euro transfer, as the page on cross-border payments in Europe explains. A SWIFT transfer is the route for every other currency and for countries outside SEPA, such as the United States, Turkey or India.

Usually one to five business days. Payments in major currencies between large banks often arrive the same or the next day; payments that pass two or three intermediary banks, need a currency conversion in a smaller market or stop at a compliance check take longer.

No. Swift is a messaging network owned by its member banks. It holds no customer money and settles nothing. The National Bank of Belgium leads the oversight of Swift together with the central banks of the G10.

Yes, through your bank and with the UETR of the payment. The tracker is a service for member banks, so you ask the bank that sent the payment. Many banks show the status in online banking.