Intermediary bank fees: what they cost and how to avoid them

Intermediary bank fees: the short answer

An intermediary bank fee is the charge a bank in the middle of an international wire takes for passing the payment on. An intermediary bank, also called a correspondent bank, is a bank that sits between the sending bank and the beneficiary's bank because those two banks do not hold accounts with each other. The beneficiary is the person or company being paid.

Intermediary fees cause most short payments, where a supplier receives less than the invoice. They are hard to predict for three reasons: the sender does not choose the banks in the chain, each bank sets its own fee, and the fee is usually taken from the payment itself rather than billed to anyone.

Source: Helm Editorial Team, from the Swift MT 103 message reference guide, as published on 29 October 2026.

Who pays the fees depends on the charge code the sender chooses: OUR (sender pays all), SHA (shared) or BEN (beneficiary pays). Our guide to OUR, SHA and BEN SWIFT charges covers the codes and what banks charge for each. This guide covers the intermediary fee itself: why the bank is there, what it takes, how to see it and how to avoid it.

Why a wire passes through intermediary banks

Banks cannot send money to a bank they have no account with. For a payment in a foreign currency, the sending bank needs an account somewhere in that currency's banking system, and so does the beneficiary's bank. When the two banks hold their accounts at different banks, a third bank links them.

Banks call these accounts nostro and vostro accounts. A nostro account is a bank's own account held at another bank, usually abroad and in that country's currency. A vostro account is the same account seen from the side of the bank that holds it. A US dollar payment between a bank in Vietnam and a bank in Colombia, for example, usually settles across the US dollar accounts those banks hold at banks in New York.

Source: Helm Editorial Team, as published on 29 October 2026. Actual routes depend on each bank's correspondent arrangements.

Fewer banks now offer correspondent services than a decade ago, which lengthens some routes. The Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) at the Bank for International Settlements reported in December 2021 that correspondent banking relationships fell by 4% in 2020 and by about 25% between 2011 and 2020, on data from more than 200 countries and jurisdictions. Banks in smaller markets are most affected: they have fewer direct links, so their payments more often pass through an extra bank.

How much intermediary banks take

Banks rarely publish what they deduct as intermediaries, so the best evidence is measured data. Ohmyfin, a cross-border payment tracking service, published an analysis in October 2026 of US dollar and euro payments sent in 2025 and 2026, comparing the amount sent with the amount the beneficiary's bank confirmed it credited.

Source: Ohmyfin, "Intermediary bank fees: who takes the cut, and how much", 25 October 2026, as published on 29 October 2026. Conversions and rejected payments were excluded from the sample.

The fee is flat, so it hurts small payments most

Intermediary fees are usually charged per payment, not as a percentage. In Ohmyfin's sample, US dollar payments under $10,000 lost a median of $20, or 0.58% of the amount, while payments of $100,000 or more lost a median of $25, under 0.01%. A business that pays a supplier ten small invoices a month pays the fee ten times; one consolidated payment pays it once.

Which bank takes it

Most of the money is taken by the first bank after the sender's own. Of 766 short US dollar payments where every bank reported, 658 lost money at one bank, 105 at two and 3 at three. The first bank after the sending bank took 79% of the money deducted, with a median cut of $25.69. The beneficiary's own bank deducted in 127 cases, mostly small amounts, with a median of $7.70.

Published guides put the range in similar terms. GoCardless states that $20 might be a somewhat standard intermediary fee for large transfers but that it can reach $100 or more. The charge depends on the currency and on where the sending and receiving banks are and how they are connected.

What the charge code changes

The charge code is the single biggest factor in whether an intermediary fee reaches the beneficiary. Ohmyfin's sample shows the difference on payments where the code was stated:

Source: Ohmyfin, 25 October 2026, as published on 29 October 2026. In the same analysis, none of the 59 euro payments sent with OUR arrived short.

Two points follow. First, SHA almost guarantees a deduction on a US dollar payment that passes through an intermediary. Second, OUR is not a guarantee. A bank in the chain that does not honor the OUR instruction, or a beneficiary's bank that applies its own receiving fee, can still reduce the amount. OUR moves the cost to the sender in most cases; it does not remove it.

How to see what each bank deducted

Every SWIFT payment carries a record of the charges taken along the way. In the MT 103 message, the standard format for a single customer payment, the fields below tell the story. Ask your bank for a copy of the message for any payment that arrives short.

Source: Swift, Standards MT November 2021, Message Reference Guide, MT 103 Single Customer Credit Transfer (copy published by BNZ), as published on 29 October 2026.

The network rules link the fields to the charge code. If field 71A says OUR, field 71F is not allowed and field 71G is optional. If it says SHA, 71F is optional and 71G is not allowed. If it says BEN, at least one 71F entry is mandatory. So the difference between field 33B and field 32A, plus each 71F entry, shows what each bank deducted.

Swift gpi tracking

Swift gpi is a service level that banks sign up to, and Swift reported in September 2019 that more than 60% of cross-border MT 103 payments were already sent as gpi. Its rules state that all gpi banks must provide transparency on their deductions on a transactional basis, and every gpi payment carries a UETR, a unique end-to-end transaction reference. The detailed breakdown of deductions in the gpi tracker is available to the banks, so ask your bank to read it for you. Our guide to how long an international wire takes covers tracing a payment with its UETR.

How to avoid intermediary bank fees

Intermediary fees can be reduced, moved or avoided altogether. The table sets out the methods in order of how much they remove.

Source: Helm Editorial Team, as published on 29 October 2026.

ACH is the US network for low-cost domestic bank transfers, and Fedwire is the Federal Reserve's same-day system for large dollar payments; our guide to SWIFT, ACH and Fedwire compares them. SEPA is the euro bank transfer system for the European Economic Area and a few other countries. On the receiving side, the same logic applies: a business paid by US customers avoids most intermediary fees when the customer can pay by a domestic US transfer, as our guide on receiving USD from overseas buyers explains.

Disclosure rules, and why businesses rely on contracts

In the United States, consumers get a disclosure that businesses do not. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's remittance rule, in Regulation E, defines covered third-party fees as fees imposed on a remittance transfer by a person other than the provider, which covers fees taken by intermediary banks. But the rule's sender is a consumer who sends money primarily for personal, family or household purposes. A company paying a supplier is outside it, so a bank has no obligation under that rule to tell a business in advance what intermediaries will take.

Source: 12 CFR 1005.30 (Regulation E, Subpart B, remittance transfers), Cornell Legal Information Institute, as published on 29 October 2026.

For a business, the protection is in the contract. Write the charge terms into the purchase order and invoice: for example, "Payment by SWIFT in USD; all bank charges, including intermediary bank charges, for the buyer's account (OUR)." If the supplier bears its own costs, say so. When a shortfall arrives, the contract decides who sends the difference, and your accountant can book the deduction as a bank charge against the right invoice rather than as an unpaid balance.

Where Helm fits

Helm is a financial technology company, not a bank. Accounts are held with regulated partner institutions. Helm sends payments by international wire and, where available, on local rails, and shows the rate, the fee and the expected arrival before you confirm:

• Local rails: where a supplier can be paid on a local rail in its own currency, there is no correspondent chain on the payment.
• Receiving into USD account details in the company's own name, with a routing and account number that receives ACH, Fedwire and SWIFT, alongside EUR and GBP details.

Each client has a named account manager, and review questions are answered in writing within one business day.

A checklist to stop short payments

1. Ask the supplier for its bank's SWIFT code, its US dollar correspondent and that correspondent's SWIFT code, and put them on the payment.
2. Use OUR for invoices that must arrive in full, and write the charge terms into the contract.
3. Pay on a local rail in the supplier's currency where one exists.
4. Consolidate small invoices into fewer payments where the terms allow.
5. Ask payers in the US to pay US account details by ACH or Fedwire, not by international wire.
6. For any short payment, get the MT 103 and compare fields 33B and 32A and each 71F entry.
7. Ask your bank to read the gpi tracker for the payment's UETR if the message does not explain the gap.

Questions

References

1. Ohmyfin: Intermediary bank fees: who takes the cut, and how much (25 October 2026)
2. Swift: MT 103 Single Customer Credit Transfer, Message Reference Guide, Standards MT November 2021 (copy published by BNZ)
3. Swift: gpi for corporates (Association of Corporate Treasurers)
4. Bank for International Settlements: Correspondent banking trends persisted in 2020, even as payment landscape changed, new data show (13 December 2021)
5. 12 CFR 1005.30, Remittance transfer definitions (Cornell Legal Information Institute)
6. GoCardless: How to avoid intermediary bank fees
7. BNP Paribas: Improving cross-border payments, how SWIFT's global payment initiative is changing the landscape

This guide is general information for businesses, not financial, legal or tax advice. Rules, fees and timings were checked against the sources listed on the review date and may change.