Purpose codes

Some country and currencies require a purpose of payment to be provided within the payment instruction to enable the beneficiary bank and government authorities to monitor payments. Currently these include payments to the following countries and currencies.

• CNH to China (hyperlink to sub menu)
• SAR to Saudi Arabia (hyperlink to sub menu)
• AED to United Arab Emirates (hyperlink to sub menu)

CNH to China

As part of the payment instruction, you can specify the purpose of the payment, using a set of pre-defined purpose codes. It is mandatory to specify the purpose of the payment for CNH payments to China, as the payment will otherwise be rejected, delayed or incur additional charges.

The purpose code is supported via Client Portal and API, and although without direct support to instruction via Swift directly, the value is converted to Field 72 in the outgoing MT103 messages.

We support four different purpose codes:

For client’s instructing via Client Portal or API please populate this information within the ‘Purpose code’ field. For more information, please visit Initiate Payments. A copy of the CSV format can also be found here for use on the client portal, with a guide here.
Clients instructing via SWIFT should populate the above code in Remittance Field (field 70) on line 1.

SAR to Saudi Arabia

Due to regulatory requirements mandated by the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA), funds transfers disbursed via Cross Border Funds Transfer (CBFT) to Saudi Arabia need to contain a purpose of payment. This mandatory purpose of payment does not follow specific purpose codes in Saudi Arabia and can be provided in free format. The populated value should follow the SWIFT standard of 140 char/4 line/35 char each standard, and only English is supported, and minus the special characters ( !@#$ %^&()?/><":|}\ {+= -.

Transactions submitted without a purpose of payment in Payment Details (SWIFT Field 70) may be held and ultimately rejected.

For client’s instructing via Client Portal or API please populate this information within the ‘Remittance Information’ field within line 1. For more information, please visit Initiate Payments. A copy of the CSV format can also be found here for use on the client portal, with a guide here.
Clients instructing via SWIFT should populate the above code in Remittance Field (field 70) on line 1.

All Currencies to United Arab Emirates

Purpose code requirement applies on inward payments to accounts held with UAE banks.

Inward payments to UAE from abroad should include

(1) payment purpose requirement and

(2) beneficiary account should be in IBAN format

Purpose Code can be captured In any of the 3 fields listed below :-
• Field 70 – Any Line with format /BENEFRES/AE//POP/ (3-characters Purpose Code)/ or /ORDERRES/AE//POP/ (3-characters Purpose Code)/

For client’s instructing via Client Portal or API please populate this information within the ‘Remittance Information’ field within line 1. For more information, please visit Initiate Payments. A copy of the CSV format can also be found here for use on the client portal, with a guide here.
Clients instructing via SWIFT should populate the above code in Remittance Field (field 70) on line 1.

The list of purpose codes can be found in the below link.
https://www.centralbank.ae/media/ipaifsll/bop-purposeofpaymentcodestable-en-18092017.pdf

Transactions submitted without a purpose of payment in Payment Details may be held and ultimately rejected by Banking Circle's correspondent bank or the ultimate beneficiary bank.