Financial messaging co-operative Swift is reporting a succesful community migration from legacy message type (MT) 100 to the new MT103, which holds out the promise of increased automation and transparency for correspondent banks sending single customer credit transfers.
Swift says 7200 customer transfer sending banks were involved in the migration.
The two messages types have operated in parallel over the past three years but only the MT103 is now accepted on the Swift network.
Swift introduced MT103 to replace MT100 - its most widely used message - in response to customer requests to improve credit transfer messages and increase transparency in cross-border payments.
The new message fields require precise completion resulting in stricter validation and increased end-to-end automation, improving STP rates and reducing message repair costs.
Nicola Boothby, MT103 programme manager, says: "Banks are already seeing the rewards of the STP benefits of MT 103, including the reduction of message costs."
Swift says the European banking industry is currently promoting the MT103 as the answer to cost pressures introduced by the EU Regulation 2560/2001 on cross border payments in euro.
In parallel, the message type complies with FATF anti-money laundering and national regulatory reporting requirements, as well as increasing transparency for compliance with the EC Directive 97/5/EC on credit transfers.