Last reviewed: · Curated by Ohmyfin Organisation editorial.
A TRN (Transaction Reference Number) is the unique identifier a bank assigns to a wire transfer, ACH or SWIFT payment so it can be looked up later. Different banks use different formats — but every TRN is unique inside that bank.
Details
On a SWIFT MT103 the TRN typically appears in field 20 (Sender's Reference) and is up to 16 characters of letters, numbers and slashes. On ISO 20022 pacs.008 it appears in the <InstrId> or <EndToEndId> element.
A TRN is bank-specific, so the same payment may have a different TRN at the sender's bank, the correspondent bank, and the beneficiary's bank. To track a payment across all banks end-to-end you need the UETR (field 121), not the TRN.
If you only have a TRN, Ohmyfin can still look up the payment in many cases — the platform searches both UETR and bank-reference indices.
Key facts
Bank-assigned identifier for a single transaction
Found in MT103 field 20 / pacs.008 <EndToEndId>
Unique within the issuing bank, not across banks
For end-to-end tracking, prefer the UETR (field 121)
Frequently asked questions
TRN vs UETR — what is the difference?
A TRN is bank-specific (one bank assigns it). A UETR is global (the same code travels through every bank in the payment chain). Use a UETR for end-to-end tracking.
How do I look up a TRN?
Paste the TRN into the Ohmyfin SWIFT tracker. If the payment can be located in the SWIFT network, Ohmyfin will return its latest status.
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