Field 71A on an MT103 determines who pays the correspondent-bank fees on a cross-border wire. The wrong choice means your beneficiary receives less than expected — or your account is debited for charges you did not anticipate.
SHA (shared) — the default for most retail wires. The sender pays the sender bank's charges; the beneficiary pays correspondent and beneficiary-bank charges deducted along the way. SHA is the SWIFT default if 71A is not specified.
OUR — sender pays everything. The sender bank quotes an "all in" fee that covers correspondent charges. In practice, the sender bank either pre-pays correspondents or chases them after the fact (some correspondents send a separate MT191 charge claim).
BEN — beneficiary pays everything. The sender bank deducts no charges; the beneficiary bears all costs. Less common; mostly used for tax / regulatory wires where the recipient is responsible for net amount.
For commercial payments where the seller has invoiced an exact amount, OUR is the safer choice — it guarantees the beneficiary receives the full amount. Expect a 25-50 USD premium over SHA.
For salary or personal payments, SHA is conventional. The beneficiary expects to absorb local charges.
For tax payments to government accounts, BEN is sometimes mandated by the receiving authority — the government wants the gross amount untouched by your charges.
After ISO 20022 migration, the equivalent element is ChrgBr with values DEBT (OUR), CRED (BEN), SHAR (SHA), or SLEV (Service Level — used in some intra-EU schemes).
Almost always. Some correspondents apply post-debit charges via MT191 that your bank then bills you. In rare cases a non-cooperating correspondent deducts anyway, in which case your bank should refund the difference.
No. Once the MT103 is dispatched, the charge code is fixed. You can compensate the beneficiary separately for any unexpected deductions.
SEPA uses SLEV (service level) which mandates SHA semantics with no intermediary charges. SEPA is intra-EUR only.
A non-GPI correspondent ignored the OUR instruction. Take the MT103 confirmation to your bank — under SWIFT rules they should refund the deduction.