When the sender's bank says the money was sent but the beneficiary's bank shows nothing, you are caught in the most frustrating position in cross-border payments. The funds are not lost — they are sitting somewhere in the correspondent chain, and there is a structured process to locate and release them.
First, establish the basic facts: get the UETR from the sender's confirmation and look up the GPI status on Ohmyfin. This alone will tell you whether the payment has been confirmed by the beneficiary bank (status ACSC or ACCC) or whether it is still in transit (ACSP or stuck at a named correspondent).
If GPI shows ACSC or ACCC — credited — but the beneficiary insists they see nothing, the problem is on the beneficiary bank's internal posting side. The funds arrived at the bank's nostro account but have not been applied to the beneficiary's ledger. This is a beneficiary-bank problem, not a SWIFT problem. The beneficiary should call their bank, give them the UETR, and ask when the credit will post.
If GPI shows the payment stuck at a correspondent bank for more than 2 business days, the most likely cause is AML / sanctions screening. US-clearing correspondents are the most common bottleneck — a name-match against the OFAC SDN list triggers a manual review that can take 3–7 business days even for legitimate payments. Your sender bank can provide additional beneficiary KYC (name, address, purpose) to the correspondent to clear the flag.
If GPI shows no data at all for a UETR you trust (you got it from a regulated bank directly), there are two possibilities: the originating bank is not GPI-enabled (rare for major banks post-2022), or the payment is newer than a few hours and the GPI update has not propagated yet. Retry tracking in 2 hours.
If you are the beneficiary and you are expecting a payment: ask the sender to share the UETR and check GPI status yourself on Ohmyfin. Then contact your own bank with the UETR, the expected amount, currency, and sender name, and ask whether there is an incoming credit pending in their nostro queue.
If the sender's bank confirms the payment was sent but you find no GPI record after 3 business days, ask the sender to issue a formal MT195 (Payment Trace) inquiry. This is an official SWIFT message that requires the next bank in the chain to respond within 5 business days. Keep the MT195 reference number.
For amounts above 10,000 USD (or equivalent), mention the figure when escalating — banks have enhanced reporting duties for larger amounts and tend to prioritise these cases.
No. In the vast majority of cases the money is sitting at a correspondent bank in screening, or it has reached the beneficiary bank but not yet been posted. Get the UETR, track it, and follow the chain methodically.
Under GPI rules, every bank in the chain is responsible for its leg of the transfer. If a correspondent is sitting on funds unreasonably, the sender bank can escalate to SWIFT directly. File the MT195 through your sender bank.
Yes. If the funds are still in transit (not yet credited to the beneficiary), an MT292 recall can retrieve them. If the funds were credited but the beneficiary denies it, a bank-to-bank dispute process applies.
MT195 response: up to 5 business days. If the correspondent confirms it is holding the funds, release usually happens within 1–2 days once the issue is identified. Total resolution: typically 7–15 business days.
Ohmyfin tracks by UETR, which is the same from both ends. Both the sender and beneficiary can track the same UETR to see the current status at every hop.