홈 › Ohmyfin 답변 › Why do SWIFT payments get delayed?
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SWIFT payment delays have seven main causes: sanctions screening false positives at an intermediary bank (most common), missing or incomplete beneficiary data, cut-off times in the payment corridor, public holidays in either country, correspondent bank queue backlogs, currency-specific settlement windows, and errors in the payment message (wrong IBAN, wrong BIC).
Sanctions screening is the single biggest cause of GPI payment delays. Every bank in the chain runs the payment through screening engines against OFAC, EU, UN, and local sanctions lists. False positives (common names matching sanctioned individuals) can hold a payment for 1-3 business days while a compliance officer reviews it.
Missing beneficiary data (Travel Rule violation) causes automatic holds or rejections at many banks. This is increasingly common as regulators demand full structured addresses, not just account numbers.
Currency cut-off times create invisible windows. USD has a New York cut-off of approximately 17:00 Eastern; GBP has a Chaps cut-off around 15:00 London time. A payment arriving 10 minutes after cut-off may be queued until the next business day.
Public holidays in the sender's country, the beneficiary's country, or any country where the correspondent banks are headquartered can add 1-2 days. A USD payment over a US public holiday (Thanksgiving, Fourth of July, MLK Day, etc.) will queue regardless of the sender's local market hours.
Correspondent bank queue backlogs happen when a particular corridor has very high volume (end of quarter, major holidays) and the correspondent's processing queue overflows the same-day target.
Track the UETR on Ohmyfin to immediately identify which of these reasons applies — the status code and the holding bank name together diagnose the delay.