Painless wire-transfer instructions

For many business users, composing wire-transfer instructions for transmitting funds to Canadian banks can be rather frustrating, because the banks themselves do not present the syntax in a way that can be converted to the internationally recognized SWIFT MT103 format. The templates I have seen do not even allow for fillable formats for on-screen entry and validation before printing and forwarding, let along ease of use for on-screen data entry such as is used in other countries. Here are some pointers that I have gathered which may be of use.

Scenario: transmission of CAD funds to a Canadian bank (details of beneficiary)

Bank	Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (010) (SWIFT CIBCCATT)
Transit (branch)	aaaaa
Account number	xx-xxxxx
Branch address	123 ANYWHERE ST ST JOHN'S, NL  A1A 1A1 CANADA
Beneficiary name and address	JOHN Q. DOE 456 ELSEWHERE AV ST JOHN'S, NL  A1A 1A2
Remittance information	Either description or reference - in this case, assume payment reference is 123456789
Responsibility for wire charges	Beneficiary (BEN)/Sender (OUR)/Shared (SHA) - in this case, assume BEN

The key fields will be laid out as follows:

Field tag	Field name	Format to be entered
:57A	Account with institution	SWIFT BIC: CIBCCATT //CC0010aaaaa
:59	Beneficiary	xx-xxxxx JOHN Q. DOE 456 ELSEWHERE AV ST JOHN'S, NL  A1A 1A2
:70	Remittance information	123456789
:71A	Details of charges	BEN

There are some possible variations:

• If the beneficiary has obtained his own SWIFT Business Entity Identifier, use tag :59A and enter the account number and BEI only.
• The beneficiary's bank may require the insertion of the branch's address as well, in which case use tag :57D

 I hope this clarifies matters for some users.