MT202 — General Financial Institution Transfer
Moves funds between financial institutions where both principal parties are banks: funding and repositioning of nostro accounts, settlement of interbank obligations such as foreign-exchange or money-market deals, and other bank-to-bank transfers with no underlying customer payment attached.
DIRECTION: Sent by the ordering institution, directly or through correspondents, to the institution that will apply the funds for the beneficiary institution.
WHO IS INVOLVED
- Ordering institutionInitiates the transfer of its own funds and sends the message.
- Correspondent / intermediaryPasses the payment along the chain, debiting and crediting the accounts it services.
- Account-with institutionHolds the account of the beneficiary institution and applies the credit.
- Beneficiary institutionThe bank whose account is ultimately credited; identified in field 58a.
KEY FIELDS
Curated subset of the fields practitioners meet first — the official SWIFT Standards MT documentation is the complete specification.
| FIELD | NAME | PRESENCE | WHAT IT MEANS |
|---|---|---|---|
:20: | Transaction Reference Number | MANDATORYSWIFT Standards MT | The sender's unique reference for this transfer.Adjacent banks reconcile and query on this reference; end-to-end tracking uses the UETR in the header. |
:21: | Related Reference | MANDATORYSWIFT Standards MT | Points at the business event this transfer settles — a deal reference, a related payment, or NONREF when nothing applies.Receiving banks auto-match incoming cover and settlement credits on this field. A meaningful related reference is the difference between straight-through reconciliation and an investigation.⚠ Defaulting to NONREF when a real reference exists pushes the receiver into manual matching. |
:32A: | Value Date / Currency / Amount | MANDATORYSWIFT Standards MT | When the transfer settles, in which currency, and for how much.Interbank funds move on the value date, subject to cut-offs at each correspondent; the amount format uses a comma as decimal separator.⚠ A value date that misses a correspondent's cut-off slips silently to the next business day. |
:52a: | Ordering Institution | OPTIONALSWIFT Standards MT | The bank on whose behalf the transfer is made, when it is not the sender of the message.Used in relay structures; a BIC in option A keeps routing and screening deterministic. |
:56a: | Intermediary | OPTIONALSWIFT Standards MT | A bank between the receiver and the account-with institution, through which the funds must pass.Its presence changes the meaning of the routing chain — and it drags field 57a in with it under a network-validated rule. |
:57a: | Account With Institution | CONDITIONALSWIFT Standards MT | The bank that services the beneficiary institution's account, when it is not the receiver.Conditional: the standard requires it when an intermediary (56a) is present, and it is otherwise used as routing demands.⚠ Omitting 57a while 56a is present fails network validation. |
:58a: | Beneficiary Institution | MANDATORYSWIFT Standards MT | The bank that ultimately receives the funds — always a financial institution, never a customer.If a customer should receive the money, this is the wrong message type: use a customer credit transfer so the parties are visible to screening.⚠ Routing customer money through bank-to-bank messages hides the real parties and is a transparency red flag. |
:72: | Sender to Receiver Information | OPTIONALSWIFT Standards MT | Bank-to-bank instructions that fit nowhere else, often using coded keywords.Codes such as /INS/ are machine-readable for some receivers; free text usually means manual handling.⚠ Using 72 to describe an underlying customer payment instead of sending an MT202 COV defeats the purpose of the COV variant. |
COMMON ERRORS
- Using a plain MT202 to cover an underlying customer payment instead of an MT202 COV.Consequence: The banks in the cover chain cannot screen the real originator and beneficiary — a transparency breach that draws correspondent and regulatory scrutiny, and can lead to returned funds.Avoid it: Route anything with an underlying customer payment through the COV variant; reserve the plain MT202 for genuine bank-to-bank business.
- Related reference in 21 that the receiver cannot match to anything.Consequence: The credit sits unmatched on the receiver's nostro; an investigation case opens for something that should have reconciled automatically.Avoid it: Carry the counterparty's deal or payment reference wherever one exists, and agree reference conventions with frequent counterparties.
- Intermediary present in 56a without an account-with institution in 57a.Consequence: Network validation rejects the message.Avoid it: Treat 56a and 57a as a pair in the payment engine's routing logic.
- Value date set without checking the correspondent's currency cut-off.Consequence: Settlement slips a day; the counterparty may claim interest compensation.Avoid it: Maintain cut-off tables per correspondent and currency, and validate at release time.
USAGE CONTEXTS
- Bank treasury and settlementThe everyday tool for funding nostro accounts and settling interbank obligations — the money leg of deals whose confirmations travel in other message categories.
- ISO 20022 migrationThe MT/ISO 20022 coexistence period for cross-border payment instructions ended in November 2025, and pacs.009 replaced the MT202 for interbank exchange in Swift's cross-border (CBPR+) space. The format persists in archives, translation tooling, and systems that retained MT on their own timelines.
- gpi and the UETRSince November 2018 the MT202 must carry a unique end-to-end transaction reference (UETR) in header block 3, field 121, so institution transfers are trackable the same way customer payments are.
- Cover for customer payments — use the COV variantWhen the transfer funds an underlying customer credit transfer, cover-payments market practice requires the MT202 COV, which exposes the underlying customer parties to every bank in the chain. A plain MT202 is for bank-to-bank business only.
Sources for this reference2
- Official requirement
Swift Standards MT (annual standards releases) ↗ — Swift · Category 2 — MT 202
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.
- Simplified educational illustration
Payments Signal editorial teaching models — Payments Signal
What this simplifies: Field list curated for learning; national and bilateral usage rules omitted.
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.