SWIFT transfer fees and time: where the costs and delays come from

SWIFT transfer fees and time come from the banks a payment passes through, not from SWIFT itself. SWIFT only carries the payment message. Each bank in the chain can charge a fee, convert the currency at its own rate, and add hours or days. Small business payments averaged 1.6% in total cost in 2025, and most of that was currency conversion.

Fewer banks in the chain means more money arrives, sooner. Here is what SWIFT is, where each fee and delay comes from, how the OUR, SHA and BEN options work, and how your agency can pay and get paid for less.

What is a SWIFT transfer?

A SWIFT transfer is an international bank payment whose instructions travel over the SWIFT network. SWIFT (the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) is a member-owned cooperative headquartered in Belgium that operates a messaging service for financial messages between banks.

The Federal Reserve is blunt about it: SWIFT is neither a payment system nor a settlement system. It sends the instruction. The money itself moves between accounts that banks hold with each other, which is called correspondent banking.

A SWIFT message is the letter. Correspondent banks are the post offices.

Why do SWIFT transfers take so long?

Most of the wait happens at the banks, not on the network. The Financial Stability Board (FSB) splits a payment through correspondent banks into three legs:

1. Originator leg. Your bank receives your instruction and puts it on the SWIFT network.
2. In-flight leg. The message reaches the recipient's bank, directly or through one or more intermediary banks.
3. Beneficiary leg. The recipient's bank credits the money to the end customer's account. This leg does not take place on the SWIFT network and depends on local compliance checks, bank operating hours and currency controls.

The last leg is usually the slow one. The Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) at the Bank for International Settlements studied SWIFT data. It found that prolonged processing times are largely driven by time spent at the beneficiary bank, between receiving the instruction and crediting the customer.

The FSB lists the wider causes: fragmented data standards, compliance checks, different operating hours across time zones and outdated technology. Depending on the corridor, the length of the transaction chain can add to costs and delays.

How long does a SWIFT transfer take?

It depends heavily on the route. Here are the latest measurements, from three sources:

The gap between the first two SWIFT numbers is the beneficiary leg. Reaching the bank fast doesn't mean your supplier can spend the money.

The B2B figures count the share of retail payment services, such as banks and money transfer providers, not the share of payments. They are measured on a $20,000 B2B payment. They are a different sample from SWIFT's network data, so the two don't contradict each other. They answer different questions.

Where do SWIFT transfer fees come from?

There are three layers, and you usually see only the first.

Your bank's sending fee. A flat charge for the wire, set by your bank.

Intermediary and receiving bank fees. Banks further down the chain may take a cut. In the FSB's 2024 survey, fees charged for forwarding a payment ranged on average from 0.1% to 3.4% of the payment amount. In 2025, receiver-side fees ranged on average between 0.1% and 1.3% of the amount sent.

The currency conversion cost. When a bank converts dollars to euros or pesos, its price sits inside the exchange rate. The FSB calls this the FX cost or FX margin, and it rarely shows up as a separate line item.

The conversion cost is the biggest layer. For B2B payments, the FSB's 2025 data shows an average FX cost of 1.4% inside a total average cost of 1.6%. That is 87.1% of the cost. On a $20,000 supplier payment, 1.6% works out to $320, and $280 of it is the exchange rate.

If the receiving bank does the conversion instead, it adds FX margins of 0.7–1.1% on average.

OUR, SHA and BEN: who pays SWIFT fees?

Every SWIFT payment carries a charge code that says who pays the banks. The three options:

Inside the EU, the law sets a shared split. For payments where both banks are in the Union, the payee pays the charges levied by its provider, and the payer pays the charges levied by its own.

If you need the full invoice amount, ask for OUR in your payment instructions. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology does exactly this. Its wire instructions tell payers to mark the transfer as OUR only and not to use SHA or BEN, because fees may be incurred by the originating and intermediary bank.

What is SWIFT gpi?

SWIFT gpi (global payment innovation) is the SWIFT service behind the CPMI speed data above. Each gpi payment carries a unique reference called a UETR. Banks update a payment tracker as the payment moves, so even the beneficiary leg can be measured using the UETR and updates done by the beneficiary bank to the payment tracker.

What this means for agencies: When a supplier says a payment hasn't arrived, ask your bank for the UETR and the payment's status. It tells you which bank has the money.

How much should a cross-border payment cost?

The G20 has set targets. For retail cross-border payments, which include business-to-business, the goal is a global average cost of no more than 1%, with no corridor above 3%, by end-2027. On speed, 75% of payments should be available to the recipient within one hour, and the rest within one business day.

The targets also cover transparency. Providers are expected to show the total transaction cost, including intermediary fees, the FX rate and currency conversion charges, plus the expected delivery time and payment tracking.

Progress is slow. In October 2025 the FSB said it is unlikely that satisfactory improvements at the global level will be achieved in line with the 2027 Roadmap timetable. B2B costs sat at 1.6% in 2025, unchanged from 2024.

What protections apply to SWIFT transfers?

Fewer than you might expect for business payments. This is a summary, not legal advice.

In the US, consumer remittance rules don't cover your agency's supplier payments. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's remittance rule (Regulation E, subpart B) protects a "sender", defined as a consumer who sends money primarily for personal, family, or household purposes. For those transfers, the provider must disclose the exchange rate, its fees and the amount the recipient will get before payment. The sender can cancel within 30 minutes of paying, and the refund is due within three business days.

In the EU, banks must show conversion costs up front on online transfers. Say a bank converts the currency on a credit transfer you start in its app or website. It must show the estimated charges for currency conversion and the estimated total, including fees, before you send.

Wires are hard to undo. The Federal Trade Commission warns that once you wire money, you usually can't get it back. If a wire was fraudulent, contact your bank right away and ask whether it can reverse the transfer. Check supplier bank details by phone before the first payment, never just from an email.

Six ways to pay less and wait less

1. Ask for the total, not the fee. Compare what lands in the supplier's account, in their currency. The exchange rate is most of the cost.
2. Use OUR when the full amount matters. A supplier who receives short will chase you for the difference. Put OUR on your own invoices too.
3. Pay in the supplier's currency from a balance you already hold. Converting once, in bulk, beats converting on every invoice.
4. Use local rails where they exist. In the euro area, SEPA Instant skips the correspondent chain. A local account abroad lets you pay and get paid domestically. See local-account netting.
5. Give travelers paying from abroad a local way to pay. A traveler who sends a SWIFT transfer from abroad pays conversion costs, and your agency may receive less under SHA or BEN.
6. Send early in the recipient's business day. The slow leg runs on the receiving bank's operating hours, so a payment that arrives after close waits overnight.

How Tripdash handles SWIFT transfers

Tripdash Pay supports authorization holds, ACH, SEPA instant, SWIFT and local-account netting, and traces each payment from the traveler to the exact supplier that received the funds. See how Tripdash Pay works. For the full picture, read how travel agencies collect payments.

Sources

1. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Private-Sector Systems: SWIFT, accessed October 2026.
2. Financial Stability Board. Enhancing Cross-border Payments: Stage 1 report to the G20, April 9, 2020.
3. Financial Stability Board. Targets for Addressing the Four Challenges of Cross-Border Payments: Final Report, October 13, 2021. Table 1.
4. Financial Stability Board. Annual Progress Report on Meeting the Targets for Cross-border Payments: 2024 Report on Key Performance Indicators, October 21, 2024. Box on receiver-side costs and Annex 3.
5. Financial Stability Board. G20 Roadmap for Enhancing Cross-border Payments: Consolidated progress report for 2025, October 9, 2025. Section 3.2, Box 11, Tables 7, 8 and 12. Retail data from FXC Intelligence, as of March 2025.
6. Financial Stability Board. FSB calls for enhanced policy implementation to achieve tangible improvements in cross-border payments, press release, October 2025.
7. Bank for International Settlements, CPMI. SWIFT gpi data indicate drivers of fast cross-border payments, February 8, 2022.
8. Swift. Swift cross-border payment processing speed stretches further ahead of G20 target, press release, October 17, 2024. Figures read from the release as republished by Treasury Today, October 18, 2024.
9. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Regulation E, § 1005.30 Remittance transfer definitions, § 1005.31 Disclosures and § 1005.34 Cancellation and refund.
10. Regulation (EU) 2019/518 amending Regulation (EC) No 924/2009, Article 1, inserting Articles 3a and 3b, March 19, 2019 (text as published on legislation.gov.uk).
11. Directive (EU) 2015/2366 (PSD2), Article 62, Charges applicable (text as published on legislation.gov.uk).
12. Federal Trade Commission. What To Know Before You Wire Money, accessed October 2026.
13. National Institute of Standards and Technology. Wire payment instructions for non-U.S. financial institutions, revised February 2018.
14. HSBC. UK accounts: additional charge codes for payment files available 22 March 2021, last updated January 13, 2021.