An intermediary bank is a correspondent bank in the middle of a SWIFT payment chain. When the GPI tracker shows your payment stuck at an intermediary rather than at the sender or the beneficiary bank, it means the intermediary has paused processing. The cause is almost always one of five specific scenarios — all resolvable.
What GPI shows when funds are held at an intermediary: the status reads ACSP (accepted, settlement in process) and the chain view shows the last confirmed hop ending at a named intermediary bank BIC, with no onward confirmation from the beneficiary bank. The timestamp on that ACSP update will be 24+ hours old.
Cause 1 — AML / sanctions screening: this is by far the most common reason, accounting for roughly 70% of intermediary holds. The intermediary's automated screening system matched a name, country, or reference in the payment against a restricted list (OFAC SDN, EU sanctions, UN Security Council list). Even a partial match triggers a manual review queue. The intermediary has no obligation to notify you — they will notify the sender bank via an MT195 status message.
Cause 2 — Missing or malformed field 70 (remittance information): many correspondents, especially in the US and EU, require a populated purpose-of-payment field. If field 70 is blank or contains only internal references, the intermediary parks the payment and requests a repair via the sender bank. Fix: ask the sender bank to send an MT199 amendment with a clear payment purpose.
Cause 3 — Incomplete KYC on the ordering customer: FATF wire transfer rules (Recommendation 16) require that the sender's full legal name, address, and account number travel with the payment. Some smaller originating banks send improperly formatted field 50 data. The intermediary detects this and holds pending additional information.
Cause 4 — Correspondent account cut-off or liquidity: less common, but some intermediaries have intraday liquidity management rules that queue large payments for the next RTGS cycle. This typically resolves within 4–8 hours and does not require intervention.
Cause 5 — Freeze order or legal hold: if the intermediary has received a law-enforcement freeze order (restraining order, court injunction, or asset freeze) targeting the beneficiary or the sender, the funds are legally held until the order is lifted or challenged. Your sender bank will receive a notice; you should engage a lawyer if this applies to you.
What to do: (1) Track on Ohmyfin — confirm the ACSP status and identify the intermediary BIC. (2) Email your sender bank with the UETR and the intermediary's BIC and ask them to contact that bank's payments operations team for a status. (3) Ask the sender bank to send an MT195 inquiry if they have not already. (4) Provide any additional KYC documents the intermediary requests — transaction purpose, source of funds letter, beneficiary corporate documents — through your sender bank. (5) For holds exceeding 10 business days with no communication, escalate to your national regulator.
There is no fixed international maximum, but under GPI rules the intermediary must update the tracker within 24 hours. US OFAC guidance gives banks 10 business days to process a OFAC-matched item before they must act (block, reject, or release). EU sanctions law requires banks to act "without delay". In practice, most holds resolve within 3–7 business days.
As an end customer, you typically cannot — you do not have a banking relationship with the intermediary. The sender bank is your point of escalation. However, if you are a corporate customer and the intermediary holds is a major bank you have a relationship with, a direct call to their payments operations desk can accelerate things.
The intermediary may deduct a handling fee (typically USD 15–50) before returning the funds. Your sender bank may also charge a recall fee. The bulk of the money is returned.
Yes. Regulated banks hold payment funds in segregated nostro accounts. The funds are not at risk of bank insolvency in the same way as retail deposits. If the intermediary bank fails while holding your wire (extremely rare), the funds are typically returned to the sender bank in insolvency proceedings.