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In a wire transfer, the beneficiary is the ultimate recipient — the person, business, or institution into whose account the funds are paid. Getting the beneficiary's name, account number, and bank details exactly right is the single most preventable cause of wire transfer failures. Track any wire to a beneficiary free on Ohmyfin →
On a SWIFT MT103 message, the beneficiary details appear in field 59 (Beneficiary Customer). This field contains the account number or IBAN, the beneficiary's name, and optionally their address. The beneficiary name in field 59 is screened against sanctions lists by every correspondent bank in the chain — a partial name match can cause a compliance hold even if the underlying account is perfectly legitimate.
Beneficiary name matching is strict at SEPA banks (European transfers): the beneficiary name you provide must exactly match the name on the account. Many EU banks now reject payments where the name does not match, to prevent authorised push-payment fraud. This is known as Confirmation of Payee (CoP) in the UK or Verification of Payee (VoP) in the EU.
For business payments, the beneficiary name should be the exact legal name of the company — not a trading name, abbreviated name, or nickname. "Acme Ltd" and "Acme Limited" may seem equivalent but some banks will reject or hold the payment on a name mismatch.
In MT103 field 57 (Account With Institution) you specify the beneficiary's bank — identified by its BIC/SWIFT code. In field 56 (Intermediary Institution) you optionally specify an intermediary bank. In many cases the sender does not need to specify field 56; the correspondent network routes it automatically. However, for certain corridors (particularly in Southeast Asia and Africa) specifying the intermediary bank is required for efficient routing.
If a payment is sent to the wrong beneficiary account and the funds are credited, recovery requires the beneficiary's cooperation — banks cannot reverse a credited payment without the account holder's consent. Use the SWIFT GPI Stop-and-Recall service as soon as possible if you detect an error before crediting. Always verify account details directly with the beneficiary over a trusted channel — never rely on details received by email that could be intercepted (see payment diversion fraud at /go/fraud).
At minimum: full legal name (as on the bank account), account number or IBAN, bank name, and bank BIC/SWIFT code. For US domestic wires, also provide the ABA routing number. For some countries (India, China) additional identifiers (PAN, account type, branch IFSC code) may be required.
Yes — SWIFT covers 200+ countries. However, first-time transfers to new beneficiaries in higher-risk corridors often trigger enhanced AML screening at the correspondent banks, which can add 1–3 business days to processing time.
The payment will be returned (rejected) to the sending bank, usually within 1–5 business days. Your bank credits you the returned amount minus any correspondent fees already deducted. A returned payment confirmation will show status RJCT on Ohmyfin.
The beneficiary bank is the financial institution that holds the beneficiary's account — the last bank in the payment chain. It is different from any intermediary or correspondent banks used to route the payment. See /glossary/beneficiary-bank for the full guide.
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