An MT103 is the SWIFT message that moves a single customer credit transfer across borders. It looks daunting — colon-prefixed numbered tags, abbreviations, options A through K — but the structure is logical and stable.
Field 20 — Sender Reference. A 16-character alphanumeric reference the sender bank assigns. Used to trace within the sender bank but not globally unique.
Field 23B — Bank Operation Code. Almost always "CRED" (normal credit transfer) or "SPRI" (SWIFT-priority transfer). Other codes (CRTS, SSTD) are rare and operational.
Field 32A — Value Date / Currency / Amount. Format: YYMMDDCCCNNNNNN,NN. So 260522USD1234,56 = 22 May 2026, 1,234.56 USD. The single most-checked field on any MT103.
Field 33B — Original Currency / Amount (optional). Present when an FX conversion happened. Shows what the sender actually paid in their currency before conversion.
Field 50A/F/K — Ordering Customer. Who is sending the money. Option A = BIC, F = structured name+address, K = free-text name+address. Most customer wires use 50K or 50F.
Field 52A — Ordering Institution (optional). The sender's bank, if different from the bank originating the MT103.
Field 56A — Intermediary Institution (optional). A correspondent bank between the sender bank and the beneficiary bank, if needed.
Field 57A — Account With Institution. The beneficiary's bank — identified by BIC. This is the routing field.
Field 59 — Beneficiary Customer. The person or entity receiving the money. Usually their IBAN plus name and address.
Field 70 — Remittance Information. Free text up to 4 lines of 35 characters explaining the purpose of the payment (e.g. "Invoice 12345 for consulting services"). Critical for AML.
Field 71A — Details of Charges. SHA = shared, OUR = sender pays all, BEN = beneficiary pays all. Determines who absorbs intermediary fees.
Field 71F — Sender's Charges. The actual amount the sender bank deducted (appears with OUR or SHA).
Field 72 — Sender to Receiver Information. Free-form structured codes for bank-to-bank instructions (e.g. /INS/ for instructing bank chain).
Field 121 — UETR. The 36-character UUIDv4 that makes the payment trackable end-to-end. Mandatory since November 2018.
Inside field 59 — first line is typically the IBAN, subsequent lines the name and address.
STP = Straight Through Processing. An MT103 STP variant has stricter formatting (only option A in routing fields, no free text) so it processes without manual repair.
Yes — under PSD2 in Europe and most banking laws elsewhere, you have a right to receive the full MT103 on request. Some banks redact bank-to-bank fields (52A, 56A, 72) but the customer-facing fields must be disclosed.
MT103+ (a.k.a. MT103 STP) requires structured BICs and is restricted to fewer field options to enable straight-through processing. Functionally the same payment, just stricter formatting.