KB889466: Common Data Fields of SWIFT Message

Introduction

Before making a wire transfer, it's necessary to understand technical backgrounds involved in these kinds of transaction. Understanding the comcepts of wire transfers will give Li Ao an opportunity of not only having the ability to interpret details of different kinds ever existed from business acceptance at bank branches to different information fields on banking systems, but to having a complete dipiction of transaction which reduces potentioal risks from happening and to guarantee a seamless transaction.

Because Li Ao needs to pay the invoice of an educational institution within 14 days from its issuance, he needs to speed up the process of learning sophisticated but useful concepts which will support for his transaction with the bank. The importance of learning these concepts arises for him, as living in China service personnels of the bank usually have lower education levels and are more likely to make mistakes which are unacceptable.

Symptoms

Li Ao needs to ensure the following:

• Information of ordering customer and beneficiary (the payee) will be recorded correctly to ensure well documentations on both sides of the payer and the payee.
• Technology that will be used in the transaction is known to him.
• Wire transfer transaction placed by him will follow any industrial practices and international regulatory rules.
• Payee will be satisfied with obligatory payment deadline being well-uphold.
• Bank institutions conducting this time of business will be educated with modern knowledge in communication with Li Ao.
• If possible, original technical data in the finalized transaction will be obtained for further documentation purposes.

Solution

Based on past interactions with Copilot and information published on the Internet, Li Ao acknowledged the following concepts:

1. Name of technologies wire transfers currently conducted by banks in China will be using;
2. Machine-readable message format of transportation during in SWIFT remittance transactions, its usage, and procedure of data being added to the message during transaction;
3. State-of-the-art designs of the new technology SWIFT BPI and its usage at Bank of China nationwide in China, and differences between traditional SWIFT remittance and remittance making use of this technology;
4. Common bank practices of processing customers' remittance orders, including the batch processing of customers' orders which has been widely used globally;
5. China's nationwide foreign exchange regulations including its practice framework regulating international fund transfers from domestic individuals and entities.

Concepts outlined in the 4th item were learned in order to evaluate potential risks arised because of strict controls over international funds transfers of the current governance (Xi Jinping as dictator after the 2023 NPC session) of China.

Li Ao also acknowledged that some key data fields should be made available for customer inputs, where financial institutions will honor and compose such provided data along with other internal data into a SWIFT message, which will be sent to the recipient's bank or intermediary institutions to instruct the payment.

Outcome

As previously learned knowledges Li Ao was able to educate and instruct the bank teller to enter data in an internationally acceptable form for data fields that should be supplied by the remitter. He educated the bank teller who was in reception and has instructed her to enter data which should be used to compose various fields of the SWIFT message. Those fields are Tag 50A, Tag 57A, Tag 59A, Tag 70 and Field 71A.

Li Ao was also able to evaluate possible models of transportation of payment instruction which might apply to his remittance. During business acceptance he asked the teller to estimate possible intermediary bank fees in the transportation, and he was able to determine absolute transfer costs upon being informed of intermediary bank costs.

The bank teller was able to compose data in the core banking system which will be used to compose such listed data fields in the SWIFT MT101 message, after multiple rounds of communication with Li Ao with system design of Bank of China's core banking system in return as answers to Li Ao's questions and instructions of performing specific tasks on the teller terminal she was using.

The teller should be educated well, with experiences of customer requesting to enter data in specified form in specified fields, despite she may never know basic English knowledges in the future. Supervisors and policy makers of Bank of China may be able to check with video recording during service acceptance, and may be educated from Li Ao's behaviour and communciations. Without prior learning of those concepts he may be unable to send instructions to the bank as well as the teller in a clear manner, and the remittance the teller might make may not comply with common practices of the industry, and therefore unwanted information which makes people feel annoyed and disgusting will generate if such mistakes will occur.

The payee of this time of transaction should be processing the data reported by the recipient bank correctly, and no disgusting information from customer input of payer should be transmitted in this time of transaction. Resepctfulness should be expressed to the payer as their staff check for information of this remittance. Li Ao has ensured that obligations were honored and duties were fulfilled as the party who should ensure that international practices need to be followed and obayed.

Additionally, he was able to confirm that the chosen remittance product, which is BOC-GPI with GPI functionalities enabled, has provided values compared to traditional SWIFT remittances as the bank provided with information that traditional transactions are processed in batches and has a same pricing model determined by the amount of funds and intemediary banks involved, instead of whether GPI is chosed. While it remains unknown whether no intermediary banks will be involved in traditional transactions if choosing this type of remittance product, Li Ao's estimation is that the recipient bank which is Deutsche Bank AG should allow Bank of China to directly establish connections of SWIFT GPI messages provided if traditional SWIFT messages are already in direct connection in between. As trustworthy information source from the Internet has shown that Bank of China started its implementation of GPI remittance not after than 2018, it has been interpreted that direct connection with different bank institutions should have been already widely established and therefore, in this case, normal SWIFT remittances should be using at least one intermediary as well.

Concluding this time of study, the knowledges was proven necessary and helpful to ensure a correct instruction which not only satisfies a successful transaction but to provide with different parties useful and accurate information of the remittance.

It has been confirmed by the recipient on 4/6/2024 that the funds were successfully remitted to their account. There were no interventions from the time the transaction was requested and before the confirmation was received.