SWIFT defines roughly 200 standardised message types across 10 categories. Most apply only to specialist trading desks. For a treasury team or CFO, twelve cover 95% of operational scenarios.
MT103 — Single Customer Credit Transfer. The everyday cross-border wire. Soon migrating to pacs.008 under ISO 20022.
MT202 — General Financial Institution Transfer. Bank-to-bank settlement, often used to fund the correspondent leg of an MT103.
MT202 COV — Cover. Carries customer information alongside the bank-to-bank funds movement for AML transparency.
MT199 — Free-Format Message in category 1. Used for customer-related free text (e.g. inquiries about a specific MT103).
MT299 — Free-Format Message in category 2. Bank-to-bank operational chat.
MT700 — Issue of a Documentary Credit. The classic commercial letter of credit issuance.
MT760 — Issue of Demand Guarantee or Standby Letter of Credit. The instrument behind most bank guarantees.
MT940 — Customer Statement Message. End-of-day account statement; your treasury system ingests these nightly.
MT942 — Interim Transaction Report. Intraday cumulative activity, used by treasury for real-time cash positioning.
MT900 — Confirmation of Debit. The notification your bank sends when an outgoing wire has been debited.
MT910 — Confirmation of Credit. The corresponding incoming-credit notification.
MT195 / MT196 — Inquiry / Answer (cat 1). The trace-and-reply pair for customer-payment investigations.
MT103, MT202, MT103/202 COV become pacs.008 / pacs.009. MT940/942 become camt.053 / camt.052. MT900/910 become camt.054. The trade-finance MT 7xx series remain on MT for now.
If your bank supports camt.053, ingest that — richer structured data. MT940 will be supported alongside camt for years.
MT940 = customer statement (used by corporates). MT950 = bank-to-bank statement (used between banks for nostro reconciliation).
MT199 is a free-format message in category 1 (customer payments — typically used for customer-related inquiries). MT299 is the same in category 2 (bank-to-bank). The content is unstructured text in both.