How to Send Money via SWIFT Code: Fees, Timing, and Tracking

To send money via a SWIFT code, collect the recipient’s full name and address, their account number or IBAN, their bank’s name and branch address, and the 8- or 11-character SWIFT/BIC code, then enter those details into your bank’s wire transfer portal (or bring them to a branch), choose who pays the fees, and confirm. Sending fees at major U.S. banks run from $0 to $50 depending on the currency and how you initiate the wire, and additional costs can show up as intermediary bank deductions and an exchange rate markup.

What You Need Before You Start

Missing one field can delay or reject the transfer. Have every piece of the following in front of you before you log in:

  • The recipient’s full legal name and address, matching exactly what the receiving bank has on file. A mismatch between the name you enter and the name on the account can trigger a compliance hold that freezes the transfer for days.1U.S. Department of the Treasury. Starting an OFAC Compliance Program
  • The account number or IBAN. Transfers to Europe and the broader Single Euro Payments Area require an International Bank Account Number, and a growing number of countries outside Europe now mandate IBANs as well. Sending without one where it’s required can cause a rejection or a costly manual repair at an intermediary bank.2Swift. White Paper on Use of IBAN in Commercial Payments
  • The recipient bank’s name and the address of the specific branch where the account is held, not just the bank’s headquarters.
  • The SWIFT/BIC code identifying the receiving institution.
  • A purpose-of-payment code, if the destination requires one. Bahrain, China, India, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait all enforce this, and your transfer will be rejected if you skip it.

Ask the recipient to confirm each detail directly with their bank. A single transposed digit in an IBAN can route funds to the wrong account, and recovering them afterward is difficult.

Reading a SWIFT/BIC Code

The SWIFT code, formally the Business Identifier Code, tells the network exactly which bank should receive the payment. Every code is either eight or eleven characters, and each segment carries meaning:3Swift. Business Identifier Code (BIC)

  • Characters 1–4 identify the financial institution itself. For example, CHAS for JPMorgan Chase.
  • Characters 5–6 are the ISO 3166 country code. US for the United States, GB for the United Kingdom, DE for Germany.
  • Characters 7–8 pinpoint the bank’s head office or main processing center.
  • Characters 9–11 are an optional branch suffix. If the code is only eight characters long, it defaults to the head office.

You can find the correct code on the recipient’s bank statement, on the receiving bank’s website under “international transfers” or “wire instructions,” or by asking the recipient to get it from their branch. Online SWIFT directories exist, but confirm with the recipient’s bank directly. Directories occasionally display outdated codes for branches that have merged or closed.

Placing the Transfer

The exact screens vary by bank, but the sequence is essentially the same. Log into your bank’s online portal or mobile app and open the wire transfer or international payment section. Some banks, U.S. Bank among them, do not allow international wires through digital channels and require a branch visit or a phone call.

Select the account you want to send from and enter the amount. The system will ask you to choose a currency. You can usually send in U.S. dollars and let the recipient’s bank handle conversion, or send in the recipient’s local currency and let your bank convert before the money leaves. The fee and exchange rate differ depending on which you pick, and the difference can be substantial.

Enter the recipient’s full name, address, IBAN or account number, and SWIFT/BIC code into the designated fields. Copy and paste rather than typing manually. If you’re doing this at a branch, hand the teller a printed sheet with every detail rather than reading it aloud.

If the destination country requires a purpose-of-payment code, a dropdown or text field will appear for it. Your bank may also ask for a brief description of the payment reason even when no formal code is required.

Review the summary screen carefully. It should show the amount, the recipient details, the fee, and the exchange rate if you’re converting. Once you confirm, the bank generates a reference number. Save it. You’ll need it to track the transfer or file a dispute.

Choosing Who Pays the Fees

Before you confirm, your bank asks you to pick a charge instruction. Most senders skip past it, and the default varies by bank. The three options:

  • OUR: you pay everything. Your bank’s sending fee, all intermediary fees, and the receiving bank’s fee. The recipient gets the full amount. You’ll be billed separately for the intermediary and receiving charges, and the total can be hard to predict.
  • SHA (shared): you pay your bank’s sending fee and the recipient pays the receiving bank’s fee. Intermediary fees get deducted from the transfer amount in transit. This is the most common default.
  • BEN (beneficiary): the recipient pays everything. All fees come out of the transfer amount before it arrives.

If you’re paying an invoice where the recipient needs an exact amount, choose OUR. Under SHA or BEN they will receive less than you sent. For personal remittances where a few dollars’ variation is acceptable, SHA keeps costs reasonable on both sides.

What a SWIFT Transfer Really Costs

The sending fee is only one layer. Two other charges are less visible.

Your Bank’s Sending Fee

Major U.S. banks charge between $0 and $50 for an outgoing international wire, depending on the currency and how you initiate it. At Chase, sending in a foreign currency online costs $5 and is free above $5,000, while sending in U.S. dollars runs $40 online or $50 with a banker. Bank of America charges nothing for wires in a foreign currency and $45 for those sent in dollars. Wells Fargo charges $0 for online foreign-currency wires, $25 for online dollar wires, and $40 at a branch.

Intermediary Bank Deductions

When your bank has no direct relationship with the recipient’s bank, the payment passes through one or more intermediary (correspondent) banks. Each can deduct a fee from the transfer amount, typically $10 to $30 per intermediary. Most SWIFT payments involve a direct connection or a single intermediary, but transfers to smaller banks in less common corridors sometimes chain through two or three.4Swift. How Long Do Swift Transfers Take? The recipient opens their account to find less than you sent, with no obvious explanation unless they know to check for correspondent deductions.

Exchange Rate Markup

This is where most of the cost hides. Banks commonly add a margin of 2% to 5% above the mid-market exchange rate when converting currency. On a $5,000 transfer, a 3% markup is roughly $150 in conversion costs that never appear as a named fee on your receipt. If cost matters, compare your bank’s quoted rate against the mid-market rate before confirming.

How Long the Transfer Takes

The old three-to-five-business-day rule of thumb is outdated for most corridors. According to SWIFT’s own data, 90% of payments reach the destination bank within an hour. The bottleneck is what happens after the message arrives: the receiving bank’s internal processing, compliance checks, and crediting to the beneficiary’s account. Only about 43% of payments reach the end customer’s account within that same hour.4Swift. How Long Do Swift Transfers Take?

In practice, straightforward transfers between major banks in well-traveled corridors, such as U.S. to U.K. or U.S. to the EU, often credit within a few hours to one business day. Transfers involving smaller banks, multiple intermediaries, or countries with heavier regulatory screening can still take two to four days. Weekend and holiday cutoff times at any bank in the chain add delay too.

Tracking Your Payment

Every SWIFT payment now carries a Unique End-to-End Transaction Reference, a 36-character string embedded in the message that stays the same no matter how many banks handle it along the way.5Swift. What Is a Unique End-to-end Transaction Reference (UETR)? Your bank can use this reference to check the payment’s status in real time through SWIFT’s tracker. You get notified of status changes, including confirmation that funds were credited or that the payment was rejected somewhere in the chain.

Ask your bank for the UETR when you initiate the wire. If something goes wrong, this reference is the fastest way to locate the payment. You can also request an MT103, the standardized SWIFT message for a single customer credit transfer. It contains every technical detail of the payment instruction and serves as definitive proof that the instruction was sent through the network.

If Something Goes Wrong

Mistakes happen: a wrong digit in the account number, a duplicate payment, or fraud. Speed matters. Recovery success drops sharply after the first 24 hours.

Contact your bank immediately and request a SWIFT recall. Under the SWIFT gpi Stop and Recall service, your bank can send a cancellation message that follows the same path as the original payment. If the funds haven’t reached the beneficiary bank yet, the payment can be stopped in transit. Once the money has arrived, the recall requires the receiving bank’s cooperation. They will contact the account holder, and returning the funds depends on the beneficiary’s consent and whether the money is still in the account.

There is no guarantee of recovery. The receiving bank is generally not legally obligated to return funds in most jurisdictions, especially once the beneficiary has withdrawn them. This is why verifying every detail before you confirm matters more with wire transfers than with almost any other payment method. Unlike credit card charges, wires have no built-in dispute mechanism that forces a reversal.

Protecting Yourself From Wire Fraud

Business email compromise, where a scammer impersonates a vendor, boss, or real estate agent and sends fake wire instructions, is one of the most common sources of wire fraud the FBI tracks. The amounts are typically large and the money moves fast. A few habits reduce your exposure sharply:6Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Business Email Compromise

  • Verify changes by phone. If you receive an email asking you to send money to new account details or a different SWIFT code than you’ve used before, call the person at a number you already have on file, not the number in the email. This single step prevents most losses.
  • Enable multi-factor authentication on your bank account and email. Never disable it, even temporarily.
  • Be skeptical of urgency. Scammers almost always pressure you to act immediately. A legitimate recipient can wait for you to verify.
  • Confirm in person when possible for large transfers such as real estate closings or business acquisitions.

If you suspect you’ve been scammed, contact your bank within minutes, not hours, then file a complaint with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center. Banks have a narrow window to attempt a recall before the funds are moved onward.

When U.S. Reporting Rules Apply

Sending a wire transfer does not by itself trigger a tax filing. Wires are not cash transactions, so the $10,000 Currency Transaction Report threshold that applies to physical cash deposits and withdrawals does not apply to wires. Your bank will still report suspicious activity internally under anti-money laundering rules regardless of the amount, but that is the bank’s obligation, not yours.

Two situations do create reporting obligations for U.S. persons, and international wires are often how people first run into them:

  • Foreign account reporting. If you hold a financial account outside the United States and the combined balance of all your foreign accounts exceeds $10,000 at any point during the year, you must file FinCEN Form 114 (the FBAR) by April 15 of the following year. This applies even if you’re just sending money to your own overseas account.7Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Report Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts
  • Large gifts from foreign persons. If you receive more than $100,000 in a tax year from a nonresident alien individual or a foreign estate and treat it as a gift, you must report it on IRS Form 3520. The gift itself is not taxed, but failing to report it carries steep penalties.8Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 3520

Neither obligation is caused by the wire. They are triggered by holding foreign accounts or receiving foreign gifts. The wire is just the vehicle that puts most people in that position for the first time.