Additional information for SWIFT payments

An increasing number of countries now require additional information on their payments. This needs to be provided by the sender of the payment in order for the payment to be successfully credited to the beneficiary account. These are regulatory requirements within the beneficiary countries and failure to comply risks the payment being delayed or rejected.

Here’s the information each country requires when you send a SWIFT payment:

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All payments sent to Brazil must include a relevant IBAN. This is a regulatory requirement and failure to comply risks your payment being delayed or rejected. Please check with your beneficiary for information on IBAN details.

Brazilian Boleto payments of BRL 250,000 or more need to be accompanied with payer and beneficiary tax ID.

All payments must have a payment purpose included. If a payment purpose is not included, the payment will be delayed and could be declined.

Following recent regulatory requirements imposed by Indian Banks, the following information needs to be provided within the payment in order for the successful processing of inbound INR payments:


  • Remitter and Beneficiary relationship
  • What is the nature of the payment to the beneficiary by the remitter?
  • Type of beneficiary account held with beneficiary bank i.e. savings/nre/nro etc.
  • Whether this payment is towards expenses of branch / liaison / project office. Additional data may also be required in the form of a unique identification number provided by local authority (Reserve Bank of India) to the beneficiary
  • If payment is invoiced / service based, details to be included

It is strongly recommended that as much information regarding the purpose of the payment (including all the above details) is included within the payment instruction.

All payments must have a payment purpose included. If a payment purpose is not included, the payment will be delayed and could be declined.

All banks in Jordan are required to accept and process payment instructions only with a valid IBAN. All payments must have a purpose code included and this should be obtained by the receiving bank.

All payments must have a payment purpose included. If a payment purpose is not included, the payment will be delayed and could be declined.

All payments must have a 18 digit Clabe number. If a clabe number is not included, the payment will be delayed and could be declined.

All banks in Pakistan are required to accept and process payment instructions with IBAN. This is a regulatory requirement and failure to comply risks your payment being delayed or rejected. Please check with your beneficiary for information on IBAN details

All payments sent to Qatar must include a relevant IBAN. This is a regulatory requirement and failure to comply risks your payment being delayed or rejected and you may incur additional processing charges.

When making a rouble payment to Russia it is necessary to include the following information requested by the Central Bank of the Russian Federation:


  • Complete name and address (including the city) of the beneficiary
  • Beneficiary's account number (20 digits)
  • Beneficiary's INN (10 digit taxpayer's identification code)
  • Complete name and address (including the city) of the beneficiary's bank
  • BIK (9 digits) of the beneficiary's bank
  • Account number of the beneficiary's bank in the Russian Central Bank (20 digits)
  • VO-code (code of currency transaction), the letters VO + 5 digit payment code (written in format VO12345). Payments without the VO-code or with an incorrect VO-code will be returned
  • Explanation of the payment in English, the number and date of the contract (in payment details field)
  • NDS (VAT) amount. If no VAT is imposed on the goods or services, then you must add a remark "BEZNDS"

The information should be entered in the following form:

Beneficiary Account Number: Account Number/INN number
Beneficiary Bank: Line 1 - /BIK 04xxxxxxx/beneficiary bank Account Number in the Russian Central Bank/Name of Beneficiary Bank
Line 2 - address of Beneficiary Bank

Payment Purpose/Obligatory Information: VO plus payment purpose (written together), contract number and date (in English)

For example:
VO13040 for goods as per contract number xx dated xx
VO200590 payment for freight as per contract number xx dated xx

It is important to note that Russian banks do NOT accept payments with incomplete information so you will need to find out the purpose code from the beneficiary in advance of sending the payment.

The Saudi Monetary Fund has instructed all Financial Institutions to ensure all payments into Saudi Arabia quote the beneficiary’s IBAN. This is a regulatory requirement and failure to comply risks your payment being delayed or rejected.

If an account is held with SAAB then the IBAN will appear as per the following example:

Example of iban number

IBAN Breakdown:

  1. The Country Code is a 2 letter code which identifies the country in which the account was issued.
  2. The Check Digit is a 2 digit-code which enables validation of the IBAN.
  3. The Bank Identifier Code is a 2 digit code which is used to identify where the IBAN account is held (45 is used for SAAB).
  4. The Account Number is an 18 digit code which identifies the account into which the funds should be transferred (six leading zeros will be added to the SAAB Account Number, as SAAB has 12 digit account numbers).

Following recent mandatory governmental requirement for payments being received in Thailand, any SWIFT payment to Thailand will require the purpose of the payment to be applied within the payment instruction. For example if the payment is a salary payment you are required to enter this information within the Reference/Further Payment Details section. Supporting documents (i.e. invoice, salary slip) are required for payments over 5,000,000.00 THB, showing the purpose of the fund transfer as per bank of Thailand's regulation.

It is important to note that if the purpose of the payment and support documents (if required) is not included then the payment will be returned by the Overseas Bank.

All banks in Turkey are required to accept and process payment instructions with IBAN. This is a regulatory requirement and failure to comply risks your payment being delayed or rejected. Please check with your beneficiary for information on IBAN details.

All payments sent to United Arab Emirates (UAE) must include a relevant IBAN. This is a regulatory requirement and failure to comply risks your payment being delayed or rejected. Please check with your beneficiary for information on IBAN details.

NEW: The electronic funds transfer system provided by the Central Bank of UAE (UAEFTS) expedites payment and returns processing times for domestic electronic payments. As part of this service, the UAE Bank regulations state that the inclusion of a code referencing the purpose of payment to the beneficiary account is required for all UAE payments

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