SWIFT MTs / Learning brief
SWIFT for treasury and securities
Your notes
In simple terms / 01
What this means in plain language
Beyond payments, Swift carries category 3 treasury confirmations, category 5 securities settlement and reconciliation, and category 6 commodities messages, letting post-trade confirmation and settlement instructions travel over one network.
Swift is often associated with payments, but it also carries the messages that follow a trade. After two institutions agree a deal, they need to confirm the terms and then settle. Category 3 MT (Message Type) messages cover treasury business: a foreign-exchange confirmation such as the MT300 records an agreed currency trade, and a money-market confirmation such as the MT320 records a fixed-term deposit or loan. Category 5 messages cover securities, where the MT540 to MT548 range handles settlement instructions and their status and reconciliation, telling a custodian to receive or deliver securities against or free of payment. Category 6 covers commodities, such as precious-metals trades, and syndicated facilities. The shared idea is post-trade processing: once a price is struck, structured messages confirm what was agreed and instruct the movement of cash and assets, so both sides hold matching records and settlement can proceed without ambiguity.
Complete lesson / 02
Understand the full idea, step by step
Two dealing desks agree a trade in a thirty-second phone call, then hang up — each having scribbled its own version of the terms. Before a single unit of currency or one security moves, both sides send a structured confirmation and compare. If the two records disagree, the mistake is caught here, on paper, instead of later, in a wrong payment.
Confirmation before settlement
A trade agreed by phone, chat, or platform has two phases SWIFT supports: agreeing what was done, then moving cash and assets. Confirmation comes first. Sending a structured confirmation lets both sides compare their records and agree before value moves — a control that catches an error early, so a slip on a rate or a value date never turns into a wrong settlement.
Category 3 treasury confirmations — MT3xx messages that confirm FX and money-market trades
Category 3 (MT3xx) carries treasury confirmations. The MT300 confirms a foreign-exchange transaction — the two currencies, the amounts, the agreed rate, the value date, and each party's side. The MT320 confirms a fixed-term money-market contract such as a deposit or loan — principal, rate, and maturity. Matching these confirmations is the control: disagree, and the discrepancy is investigated before settlement.
Treasury and securities message families
- MT300 (Cat 3)
- Confirms a foreign-exchange trade
- MT320 (Cat 3)
- Confirms a money-market deposit or loan
- MT540–543 (Cat 5)
- Instruct a custodian to receive or deliver securities, free of or against payment
- MT544–547 (Cat 5)
- Confirm those settlements took place
- MT548 (Cat 5)
- Reports an instruction's status — pending, failed, and why
The shared post-trade pattern
- INSTRUCTION
A trade is agreed away from SWIFT — an FX deal, a deposit, a securities purchase.
- VALIDATION
Both sides send confirmations (MT300, MT320, or the securities equivalents) and match their records; a break is investigated before anything settles.
- SETTLEMENT
Settlement instructions move the cash and assets — for securities, MT540–543 tell a custodian to receive or deliver, against payment or free of it.
- NOTIFICATION
Confirmation and status messages (MT544–547, MT548) report the outcome and surface any failure, keeping every party's records aligned.
COMMON CONFUSION
“The MT300 confirmation is what moves the money — sending it settles the FX trade.”
A confirmation moves nothing. The MT300 records and matches the agreed terms; it is a control, not a payment. The cash and the countervalue settle through separate settlement steps once both sides agree. Confirmation proves the two desks meant the same trade — settlement is a distinct, later event.
STRICTLY SPEAKING
Strictly speaking, Category 6 covers commodities (such as precious-metals trades) with the same confirm-then-settle logic, and much of this traffic is migrating to ISO 20022 — securities to the sese and semt families, for instance. Market coverage and conventions vary by asset class and institution, and the precise fields are governed by SWIFT documentation and each market's practice. The durable model is the pipeline: agree, confirm, settle, reconcile.
FOR NOW, REMEMBER
- SWIFT carries post-trade messaging, not only payments: confirm what was agreed, then move cash and assets.
- Category 3 (MT300, MT320) confirms FX and money-market trades; matching them is a control before settlement.
- Category 5 instructs, confirms, and reports securities settlement (MT540–543, MT544–547, MT548).
- A confirmation moves no value — settlement is a separate step, and the pattern is agree, confirm, settle, reconcile.
TRY IT YOURSELF
Bank Alfa's MT300 says it buys EUR 1,000,000.00 against dollars at one rate; Meridian Bank's MT300 shows a different rate. Settlement is due tomorrow. What should happen?
You have now seen SWIFT across customer payments, bank transfers, system messages, corporates, trade, and post-trade. The network topic ties it together: what SWIFT is, what it is not, and how the pieces connect.
KEEP GOINGKey takeaways / 03
Three things to remember
- 01
Category 3 Swift messages confirm foreign-exchange and money-market trades.
- 02
Category 5 messages instruct and reconcile securities settlement across custodians.
- 03
Post-trade confirmation and settlement both travel over the same Swift network.
Practical use cases / 04
Where you would use this
A treasury desk sends an MT300 to confirm the terms of a foreign-exchange deal with a counterparty.
A back office sends an MT320 to confirm a fixed-term money-market deposit.
A custodian receives an MT540 range message instructing delivery or receipt of securities.
Worked example / 05
Put the idea into a real situation
Illustrative example: two fictional banks, Meridian Trust and Northgate Bank, agree to exchange EUR 5,000,000.00 for US dollars at a rate of 1.0850. Each sends an MT300 confirming the trade, and the two confirmations are matched. Separately, Meridian Trust instructs its custodian by an MT540 to receive 10,000 bonds against payment of USD 1,020,000.00 on the agreed settlement date.
Evidence & review / 07
Evidence & review
SWIFT Category 3 treasury, Category 5 securities, and Category 6 commodities messaging, at a conceptual level
What this brief simplifies: Describes message families conceptually; precise fields and market conventions are set by SWIFT documentation and each market's practice, and much traffic is migrating to ISO 20022. The FX rate and amounts are illustrative.
Sources for this brief3
- Official requirement
Swift Standards MT (annual standards releases) ↗ — Swift · Category 3 treasury and Category 5 securities messages
Full field-level specifications live in the Swift Knowledge Centre User Handbook behind a swift.com login; content here relies on public summaries. Swift ended MT-to-ISO 20022 coexistence for in-scope cross-border payment instructions (for example MT103 and MT202) in November 2025; MT statement messages are being phased out on a separate timeline.
- Market practice
ISO 20022 Standards (Swift ISO 20022 adoption programme) ↗ — Swift · Post-trade migration to ISO 20022
Programme milestones change over time; the coexistence period for in-scope cross-border payment instructions ended in November 2025. Check swift.com for the current timeline.
- Simplified educational illustration
Payments Signal editorial teaching models — Payments Signal · FX confirmation scenario and confirm-settle-reconcile model
Used wherever diagrams, scenarios, figures, or example values are didactic constructions rather than sourced facts; every such use carries a simplifications disclosure. All people, companies, banks, and list entries in examples are fictional.