If a payment has not arrived within the expected timescales, please consider the following before contacting us:
- Are there external factors, such as a public holiday, that may have delayed the payment?
- Is the payment at least seven working days late? Our banking provider requires us to wait seven working days before requesting an investigation. Banks involved in the payment chain need to execute due diligence checks which can cause delays.
- Check that the recipient’s bank details match the details in the payment confirmation.
To help avoid payment delays, always reference your payments clearly and pass the reference details on to the beneficiary so that they know what to look out for.
The amount of support we can provide for locating payments depends on the payment route - Swift or local.
Swift payments
There is a sophisticated tracking system available for Swift payments in the form of the Swift gpi tracker. This is available through Currencycloud Direct and our APIs and should be the first place you look if you have a query.
All Currencycloud payments are Swift gpi-enabled. Every Swift gpi-enabled payment is assigned a unique ID (UETR) that allows it to be tracked at any point across the network. Swift gpi shows the full payment chain and the last update status for the payment. Provided that all banks in the payment chain are gpi-enabled, it can be used to identify and confirm the whereabouts of the payment at any given time.
Swift gpi is growing but, currently, not all banks around the world are enabled. Payment tracking data may, therefore, be incomplete for some payments we send out. Universal Confirmations were mandated for all Swift members in November 2020, which means that Swift members must confirm when a payment (MT 103) has either been credited to the beneficiary's account, placed on hold or transferred outside of Swift. The introduction of Universal Confirmations has improved the coverage of tracking visibility.
In summary, Currencycloud can provide you with the following information to help locate a Swift payment:
- Swift gpi screenshots
- MT103 - this is a standardized Swift payment message. It is accepted as proof of payment and includes all payment details such as date, amount, currency, sender and recipient
- UETR Reference - this is a unique reference associated with each payment that is kept and shared by each bank involved in the payment
- PET reference - this is a reference from our banking partner confirming that the payment has been processed from our side.
We recommend that you pass this information to the beneficiary's bank who will then be able to locate the funds.
If the beneficiary's bank is unsuccessful, we can place a trace on the payment to locate where the funds are, although this will only be done on a “best endeavors” basis and does incur a fee. The trace can take up to seven working days before we receive a response from the beneficiary bank or an intermediary bank.
Local payments
The support we can offer if a local payment hasn’t arrived after seven working days varies by currency. We advise you to contact us at support@currencycloud.com after this period and we may be able to provide you with a trace id, which shows that the funds have left Currencycloud’s account. You should pass the trace id on to the beneficiary's bank and they will be able to help locate the payment.
Unfortunately, we are unable to offer traces or recalls for local payments.