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Field 70 on an MT103 carries the remittance information — the free-format text that tells the beneficiary what the payment is for. Invoice numbers, customer references, payment narrative. Draft an MT103 with structured remittance info →
The format of field 70 is up to 4 lines of 35 characters each — 140 characters maximum. The character set is the SWIFT "X" character set: letters, digits, and the special characters / - ? : ( ) . , ' + space and newline. Characters outside this set (e.g. umlauts, accented characters, special symbols) must be transliterated to ASCII before including them in field 70, or they will be rejected or garbled by the SWIFT network.
Best practice for field 70 is to use structured tags at the start of each line so the beneficiary's accounts-receivable system can automatically identify and process the reference. The most widely used tags are: /INV/ followed by the invoice number (e.g. /INV/INV-2024-0001); /RFB/ followed by a customer reference number; /ROC/ for the remittance origin code; /PO/ for a purchase order number. These structured tags are aligned with the ISO 20022 remittance data structures and enable automated reconciliation at the beneficiary's ERP.
The 140-character limit is a known constraint of MT103 field 70. For payments with complex multi-invoice remittance details, 140 characters is far too short. This is one of the principal reasons ISO 20022 pacs.008 was developed — the pacs.008 RmtInf element supports both unstructured text (up to 140 characters) and a fully structured variant that can carry multiple individual transaction references, each with creditor reference type, reference number, debtor reference, and a URL pointing to an invoice document.
Compliance note: do not include sanctioned country names or terms associated with controlled goods (weapons, narcotics, oil, explosives) in field 70. Correspondent banks run their payment screening tools over field 70 as well as over party names. An innocent payment with field 70 containing "crude oil - invoice 1234" may trigger a manual hold at a US or EU correspondent simply because "crude oil" is a common pattern in sanctions-compliance workflows, regardless of whether the payment is actually for oil.
In ISO 20022 pacs.008, SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT) and SCT Instant use a structured remittance reference format (RmtInf/Strd/CdtrRefInf) that can carry the ISO 11649 Structured Creditor Reference — a standardised reference number with a check digit for automatic validation. This enables European B2B payments to carry fully machine-readable, validated invoice references with no character-set limitations. Ohmyfin's MT103 drafter at /draft/mt103 provides a remittance-information field with tag autocomplete and character counting.
Technically yes if it fits in 35 characters per line, but many banks strip or warn on URLs to prevent phishing or compliance issues. A short reference code using /INV/ tags is far more reliable across all correspondents.
Some correspondent banks truncate or strip field 70 content when reformatting the SWIFT message, particularly if the content contains characters outside the SWIFT X character set. In ISO 20022 environments, remittance information is preserved more reliably in the structured RmtInf element. If remittance information is critical, confirm with the beneficiary's bank that they will pass it through.
No. Field 70 (Remittance Information) is the customer-facing payment narrative — it appears on the beneficiary's bank statement and is meant for the beneficiary. Field 72 (Sender to Receiver Information) contains bank-to-bank operational instructions — not shown to customers, only visible to the banks processing the message.
Structured remittance tags are standardised codes placed at the start of a field 70 line: /INV/ = invoice number, /RFB/ = reference forwarded from the beneficiary, /ROC/ = remittance origin code, /PO/ = purchase order. These codes are machine-readable and allow the beneficiary's ERP to automatically match the payment to the correct invoice.
pacs.008 carries a RmtInf element with two options: Ustrd (unstructured, up to 140 characters of free text) and Strd (structured, with sub-elements for creditor reference type, reference number, debtor reference, and a URL to an invoice document). The structured variant enables fully automated invoice reconciliation with no character-set limitations and check-digit validation via ISO 11649.
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