Field 70 Remittance Information and Field 71G Receiver's Charges

Field 70 carries remittance information, the free text that tells the beneficiary what the payment is for. It allows up to four lines of 35 characters each, so the sender must be concise. A typical entry might read INV 88412, INV 88419, or CONTRACT 2026 0417, or SALARY OCT 2026. The beneficiary accounts team uses field 70 to match the credit to an invoice, a contract or a payroll run. If field 70 is blank or vague, the beneficiary may hold the funds in a suspense account while it asks the sender what the payment relates to, which delays reconciliation by days. Field 70 must be written with care because it is limited and it is screened. Each line holds only 35 characters, so long invoice numbers and long descriptions must be shortened without losing meaning. The text is also screened against sanctions lists, so a reference that includes a sanctioned country name or a restricted word can trigger a hold. A payment of 45,000 euros for invoice 99120 from a Berlin importer to a Shanghai exporter should carry INV 99120 in field 70, not a full paragraph, because the full paragraph will not fit and will be truncated by the sending system. Field 71G carries the receiver charges, the amount the beneficiary bank will deduct before it credits the beneficiary. It is written as a three letter currency code followed by the amount, such as EUR15,00 for a 15 euro charge. Field 71G appears only under the OUR charge option, where the sender prepays the receiver charges so the beneficiary still receives the full instructed amount. It is not allowed under SHA or BEN. If the receiver charges the sender separately through a fee account, field 71G is not used. The beneficiary can therefore read field 71G and see exactly how much the receiver will take before crediting the account. Field 71G works together with field 71A, the details of charges. Under SHA, which means shared charges, each bank in the chain deducts its own fee and reports it in field 71F on the next MT103 it sends, and field 71G is not allowed. Under OUR, the sender pays all charges separately, so no bank should deduct from the amount, field 71F must not appear, and field 71G may carry the receiver charges the sender has prepaid. Under BEN, the beneficiary bears all charges, so each bank deducts its fee and the final amount is reduced by the total, and at least one field 71F entry is mandatory. A payment of 100,000 dollars sent with SHA through two banks charging 15 dollars and 25 dollars will arrive as 99,960 dollars, and the beneficiary can trace the 40 dollar difference through the two field 71F entries. Operations teams use fields 70, 71F and 71G to resolve the two most common beneficiary queries. The first query is why the amount received is less than the amount invoiced, and the answer is the sum of the field 71F deductions plus any charge taken by the beneficiary bank itself. The second query is what the payment was for, and the answer is field 70. A beneficiary in Madrid who receives 367,532.90 dollars instead of 367,574.90 dollars can add the 20 dollar charge from Wells Fargo and the 22 dollar charge from Bank of New York Mellon to reach the original amount, and field 70 will show the invoice reference that explains the underlying trade.