Last reviewed: · Curated by Ohmyfin Organisation editorial.
A correspondent bank is a bank that holds an account (a 'nostro' account) for another bank in a foreign currency, allowing that other bank to make and receive payments in that currency without having a local branch. Almost every cross-border SWIFT payment passes through 1-3 correspondent banks.
If a small bank in Pakistan needs to send US dollars, it doesn't have a US Federal Reserve account. Instead it has a nostro account at a US bank — say JPMorgan Chase. JPMorgan acts as the Pakistani bank's correspondent for USD. The same arrangement exists for every currency.
On a typical SWIFT payment chain: the sender's bank routes via its USD correspondent → which routes via the beneficiary bank's USD correspondent → which credits the beneficiary bank, which credits the customer.
The largest correspondent banks worldwide are JPMorgan Chase, Citi, BNY Mellon, HSBC, Standard Chartered, Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, MUFG, ICBC and UBS.
Correspondent fees are why a SWIFT payment costs more than a domestic payment — each correspondent in the chain takes a fee (typically USD 5-30). Modern SWIFT GPI shows full fee transparency on the UETR tracking record.
A correspondent bank is a bank that holds an account (a 'nostro' account) for another bank in a foreign currency, allowing that other bank to make and receive payments in that currency without having a local branch. Almost every cross-border SWIFT payment passes through 1-3 correspondent banks.
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