| Field | Meaning | Required |
|---|---|---|
:20: | A unique reference assigned by the sending bank to identify this payment through its whole life. It must not repeat for the same sender within the same business | M |
:23B: | A four character code that tells the receiving bank how to handle the transfer. CRED means a normal credit transfer, SPAY means a SWIFT payment, SSTD means a st | M |
:32A: | The value date on which funds become available to the beneficiary, the three letter ISO currency code and the amount to be paid. For USD 25,000 on 5 November 20 | M |
:33B: | The currency and amount in which the ordering customer instructed the payment, when that differs from the settlement currency in field 32A. It preserves the ori | O |
:50a: | The customer who ordered the payment, identified by account number and name and address. Option K gives account, name and address in free text. Option F gives s | M |
:52a: | The financial institution that ordered the transfer when it is not the sender of the message. It is normally the bank holding the ordering customer account in a | O |
:53a: | The account held by the sender with the receiver, or the correspondent bank through which settlement will occur. It tells the receiving bank where to debit the | O |
:54a: | The account held by the receiver with another bank, used when the receiver does not hold the sender account directly. It identifies the next bank in the settlem | O |
:57a: | The bank where the beneficiary holds an account, when it is not the receiver of the MT103. It directs the receiving bank to forward the payment to the correct a | O |
:59a: | The final recipient of the funds, identified by account number and name and address. Option A gives the account and BIC, option F gives structured name and addr | M |
:70: | Free text information for the beneficiary explaining what the payment is for, such as an invoice number, contract reference or salary month. It is limited to fo | O |
:71A: | A three letter code stating who pays the transfer charges. OUR means the ordering customer pays all charges, BEN means the beneficiary pays all charges, and SHA | M |
Meridian Bank London sends an MT103, reference MER1035521, for USD 25,000 value 5 November 2024 to Harbour Bank Singapore to pay Bright Logistics for invoice INV-1187. This is a pre-migration example, from before coexistence ended on 22 November 2025. Field :71A: is SHA, the beneficiary account is given in :59a:, and the payment settles on the value date.
Valid example from the message catalogue. Scheme rules: MT103 is a SWIFT MT (FIN) message, not a base ISO 20022 message: there is no single global scheme rulebook, and each bank and market practice sets its own format limits and cut-off times on top of the
JPMorgan Chase and Citibank
What you will learn
Your objective. By the end of this lesson, you will be able to explain jpmorgan chase and citibank. JPMorgan Chase runs one of the largest payment operations on the planet, moving more than 10 trillion dollars a day across its wholesale payment systems.
Why it matters. A business analyst working at either bank spends much of the time mapping fields between the old and new formats and testing that no data is lost in translation.
Chapter objective: Learner compares how ten large banks organise payments, including hub models, vendor choices, and operating models, and extracts lessons a smaller bank can apply. Learner applies this skill in realistic banking scenarios, with clear examples and correct terminology throughout.
Key learning points
- JPMorgan Chase
- Citibank has a similar scale
- Banks act as correspondent banks for thousands
- Correspondent model
- Business analyst working at either bank spends
- Services alongside SWIFT and Fedwire
Key terms
Remittance information: Information that explains what a payment is for, such as invoice numbers, contract references or salary month.
Correspondent banking: A service where one bank holds accounts for another bank so the second bank can make payments in currencies or countries where it has no branch.
Intraday liquidity: Cash available to a bank during the business day to settle payments as they fall due. Intraday liquidity comes from account balances, incoming payments and central bank facilities.
SWIFT MT message viewer showing JPMorgan Chase and Citibank.
Practise this lesson
Exercise
Route the payment described in this lesson and justify the route.
Use the routing rules, the correspondent chain and the charges in this lesson.
- What to do. Name each bank in the chain, the message used on each leg, and the charges deducted at each step.
Correct result. The route follows the correspondent chain from the debtor agent to the creditor agent, with each intermediary deducting its charge and passing the remainder on. The message on each leg carries the information the next bank needs.
Why. Routing is a business decision with a cost. The wrong route is slower, more expensive, or fails.
Check your understanding
Practice question
How do most large banks organise payments technology today?
Takeaway and next step
What to remember
These services do not replace SWIFT or Fedwire, but they sit alongside them and solve specific problems, such as slow payment investigations and trapped intraday liquidity.
Map the message fields from this lesson in the mapping workbench.
Builds on "Database Design for Payments".
Transcript and full text
Show transcript
JPMorgan Chase runs one of the largest payment operations on the planet, moving more than 10 trillion dollars a day across its wholesale payment systems. Its payment platform processes corporate payments, trade finance, foreign exchange, and liquidity management for more than 100,000 corporate clients in over 120 countries. The platform is built around a central payment hub that connects to the US clearing systems, Fedwire and the Clearing House, and to SWIFT for cross-border payments. A corporate treasurer in London can instruct a payment in 120 currencies from a single portal, and JPMorgan routes it through its own branches or its correspondent network to reach the beneficiary bank. Citibank has a similar scale and a different strength, its own branch network. Citi operates in more than 90 countries, which means it can often move a payment between two Citi branches without using a third-party correspondent at all. Its Global Payments platform lets corporate clients send and receive payments in more than 140 currencies, and its CitiConnect service provides a single host-to-host connection for large companies to send payment files, receive statements, and check balances across all their Citi accounts worldwide. A multinational company with factories in Mexico, India, and Poland can manage all its Citi accounts through one CitiConnect link instead of building a separate connection in each country. Both banks act as correspondent banks for thousands of smaller banks that have no presence in the United States. A bank in Nigeria that wants to send dollars to a supplier in China opens a US dollar nostro account with JPMorgan or Citi in New York. When the Nigerian bank instructs a payment, it sends a SWIFT MT103 message to its correspondent, which debits the nostro account and forwards the payment through Fedwire or CHIPS to the beneficiary bank in China. The correspondent charges a fee for this service, typically 15 to 35 dollars per payment, and earns interest on the balances held in the nostro accounts. This correspondent model is the backbone of the global dollar payment system. Both banks have invested heavily in the migration to ISO 20022, the new global message standard. JPMorgan and Citi were among the first banks to support pacs.008 customer credit transfers and pacs.002 payment status reports on SWIFT, and both have upgraded their payment hubs to process the richer data that ISO 20022 carries, such as full remittance information and structured addresses. The migration is phased. The banks run the old MT format and the new ISO 20022 format in parallel, converting messages between the two where needed, so that customers who are not yet ready are not cut off. A business analyst working at either bank spends much of the time mapping fields between the old and new formats and testing that no data is lost in translation. JPMorgan Onyx is the bank blockchain and digital assets division, and its Liink network is a good example of how the bank is modernising correspondent banking. Liink lets more than 400 banks share payment-related information before a payment is sent, so that a receiving bank can confirm the beneficiary account details in advance and reduce the number of payments that are rejected for wrong information. Onyx also runs a system for intraday liquidity and for tokenised deposits, where a digital representation of a dollar deposit can move between JPMorgan accounts instantly. These services do not replace SWIFT or Fedwire, but they sit alongside them and solve specific problems, such as slow payment investigations and trapped intraday liquidity.
JPMorgan Chase runs one of the largest payment operations on the planet, moving more than 10 trillion dollars a day across its wholesale payment systems. Its payment platform processes corporate payments, trade finance, foreign exchange, and liquidity management for more than 100,000 corporate clients in over 120 countries. The platform is built around a central payment hub that connects to the US clearing systems, Fedwire and the Clearing House, and to SWIFT for cross-border payments. A corporate treasurer in London can instruct a payment in 120 currencies from a single portal, and JPMorgan routes it through its own branches or its correspondent network to reach the beneficiary bank.
Citibank has a similar scale and a different strength, its own branch network. Citi operates in more than 90 countries, which means it can often move a payment between two Citi branches without using a third-party correspondent at all. Its Global Payments platform lets corporate clients send and receive payments in more than 140 currencies, and its CitiConnect service provides a single host-to-host connection for large companies to send payment files, receive statements, and check balances across all their Citi accounts worldwide. A multinational company with factories in Mexico, India, and Poland can manage all its Citi accounts through one CitiConnect link instead of building a separate connection in each country.
Both banks act as correspondent banks for thousands of smaller banks that have no presence in the United States. A bank in Nigeria that wants to send dollars to a supplier in China opens a US dollar nostro account with JPMorgan or Citi in New York. When the Nigerian bank instructs a payment, it sends a SWIFT MT103 message to its correspondent, which debits the nostro account and forwards the payment through Fedwire or CHIPS to the beneficiary bank in China. The correspondent charges a fee for this service, typically 15 to 35 dollars per payment, and earns interest on the balances held in the nostro accounts. This correspondent model is the backbone of the global dollar payment system.
Both banks have invested heavily in the migration to ISO 20022, the new global message standard. JPMorgan and Citi were among the first banks to support pacs.008 customer credit transfers and pacs.002 payment status reports on SWIFT, and both have upgraded their payment hubs to process the richer data that ISO 20022 carries, such as full remittance information and structured addresses. The migration is phased. The banks run the old MT format and the new ISO 20022 format in parallel, converting messages between the two where needed, so that customers who are not yet ready are not cut off. A business analyst working at either bank spends much of the time mapping fields between the old and new formats and testing that no data is lost in translation.
JPMorgan Onyx is the bank blockchain and digital assets division, and its Liink network is a good example of how the bank is modernising correspondent banking. Liink lets more than 400 banks share payment-related information before a payment is sent, so that a receiving bank can confirm the beneficiary account details in advance and reduce the number of payments that are rejected for wrong information. Onyx also runs a system for intraday liquidity and for tokenised deposits, where a digital representation of a dollar deposit can move between JPMorgan accounts instantly. These services do not replace SWIFT or Fedwire, but they sit alongside them and solve specific problems, such as slow payment investigations and trapped intraday liquidity.
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