ISO 20022ISO 20022 is the international standard for financial messages, built from a common business dictionary and usually expressed in XML. Payment messages are grouped as pain (customer to bank), pacs (bank to bank) and camt (cash management, such as statements). It is the format of SEPA, T2, CHAPS and Swift cross-border payments.
Remittance informationRemittance information is the data in a payment that tells the payee what the payment is for, such as invoice numbers. It can be unstructured free text (140 characters in SEPA) or structured, such as a creditor reference under ISO 11649 starting with RF. Good remittance data lets the payee match payments to invoices automatically.
Swift (network)Swift is a cooperative, owned by its member institutions, that runs a secure messaging network for payment, securities and trade messages between banks and other institutions worldwide. Swift carries instructions only: it holds no accounts, and the money settles on the books of banks or in central bank systems. Members must meet its Customer Security Programme controls.
MT 103 (single customer credit transfer)MT 103 is the legacy Swift message for a single customer credit transfer between banks, with fields such as 50 (ordering customer), 59 (beneficiary), 70 (remittance information) and 71A (charges). In cross-border payments pacs.008 has replaced it, and banks still meet MT 103 data in archives, translations and investigations.
SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area)The Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) is the area in which people, companies and public bodies make and receive euro credit transfers, instant payments and direct debits under the same rules, whether domestic or cross-border. It covers the EU, the European Economic Area and several other European countries, and rests on European Payments Council schemes and the SEPA Regulation.
T2 (TARGET RTGS and central liquidity management)T2 is the Eurosystem's real-time gross settlement system for euro, which replaced TARGET2 in March 2023. It combines Central Liquidity Management, where banks hold their main central bank accounts, with an RTGS service where high-value payments settle one by one in central bank money. It is part of the TARGET Services with T2S and TIPS.
CHAPSCHAPS is the UK's high-value sterling payment system, operated by the Bank of England, which settles payments one by one in central bank money through its real-time gross settlement service. It is used for interbank payments, large corporate payments and house purchases, and moved to ISO 20022 messages in 2023.