Dear Customer,

Thank you for your continued support of our e-Banking, herein inform you of an important update on “Forex. Transfer” service. To follow SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) funds migration program, the payment message (MT) format will migrate to ISO 20022 standard (MX) format.  We are pleased to inform you that our e-Banking will be able to send MX message format from June 24th, 2024 (the MT payment message format will be deactivated by November 2025).

 

The major differences and adjustments are as follows:
By ISO 20022 standard, the e-Banking ”Forex. Transfer” service adjusts several data fields in our "Beneficiary Info. Management for Forex. Transfer " and "Forex. Transfer" function. These adjustments include adding several new data fields such as "City", "Country", "Postal Code", "Creditor Agent (Branch Identification)", "Creditor Agent(Clearing System Number)", "Instruction For Creditor Agent" and "Instruction For Next Agent" and removing "Sender to Receiver Information " accordingly.  The above "City" and "Country" are mandatory fields when you add Beneficiary info.

 

Furthermore, in the MT format, the address information is described along with name field of "Beneficiary", "Beneficiary Bank", and "Branch".  While in the MX format the name and address information is addressed in separate and independent fields.  Therefore, since June 24th, 2024, the aforesaid information in our e-Banking will be automatically and gradually converted into respective fields.  However, since part of the name or address information is difficult to accurately distinguish by system, there may be some discrepancies in the conversion results. Hence, we kindly request you to review if the beneficiary information is complete and accurate before processing cross-border payments.  If it deems necessary, please execute the "Transfer / Payment Management > Beneficiary Info. Management for Forex. Transfer " function to make modifications to the beneficiary information.

 

If your beneficiary information kept in our system does not contain the above mentioned mandatory data that is required by the MX format, our e-Banking would still continue to process remittances using the MT format. However, we kindly inform you that the MT format is expected to be deactivated in November 2025 and please be sure to update the beneficiary information in line with the MX format, especially the new-added fields such as "City" and "Country".

 

First Bank sincerely appreciates your continued support!