The sender typed 5,000. The receiver got something like 4,968. Nobody is quite sure where the difference went, and the confirmation email says nothing about it.
That gap is usually one of two things: a fee taken by a bank in the middle of the route, or a fee taken by the bank at the end. Sometimes both. This guide is about how to see it coming, how to pay it on purpose if that suits you, and what to do when it has already happened.
Why a middle bank can take money in the first place
Picture the pipe again. Your bank and the recipient’s bank often don’t have a direct account with each other, so the payment is handed through one or more banks that do. Another guide here draws the whole route. For this article only one detail matters: a bank in the middle has no account of yours to charge.
So it takes its fee from the payment itself. Ebury’s help page puts it this way: intermediary banks have no source account to debit, so they take the fee from the payment amount. The amount shrinks as it passes through. The next bank sees a smaller number than the last one did.
You’ll hear several names for these fees: intermediary fees, correspondent charges, lifting fees, deductions. They aren’t a formal tariff you can look up. Each bank sets its own, and they’re often not disclosed in advance. OFX’s help page says as much: the recipient may only notice them as a shortfall in the amount received. No neutral source gives a typical range, so none is given here. Treat any blog that quotes a neat figure with caution.
OUR, SHA and BEN: who has agreed to pay what
In a SWIFT payment, the sending bank marks who should bear the charges. The field is called 71A in the older message format, and the options are three codes.
| Code | Meaning in plain English | Effect on the recipient |
|---|---|---|
| OUR | The sender pays all charges, including the middle banks and the recipient’s bank | Should receive the full amount |
| SHA | Shared: sender pays their own bank, recipient bears the rest | Receives the amount minus deductions |
| BEN | The recipient pays everything, including the sender’s bank | Receives noticeably less |
Those descriptions follow AMINA Bank’s and Flywire’s help pages. SHA is the most common, according to AMINA, and Modern Treasury’s documentation says cross-border payments usually default to shared. Some providers don’t offer BEN at all.
Two caveats you won’t see on the checkout screen.
First, OUR isn’t a guarantee. Ebury warns that the beneficiary bank or its correspondents may still deduct charges even when OUR is set. It should be the case that you’ve paid for everyone. In practice, banks along the way don’t always read the instruction the same way, or they bill the sender later.
Second, you don’t always get a choice. Within the EU, Article 62 of the second Payment Services Directive says that for payments inside the Union, each side pays its own provider’s charges: the payer covers the payer’s bank, the payee covers the payee’s. One payment firm states that payments from an EEA-based payment institution to EEA countries can’t use OUR and default to SHA. Euro SEPA payments have a single charging model with no choice at all.
How to recognise the deduction
Start with arithmetic. Compare what you sent, the fees your bank said it charged you, and what the recipient was credited. If the recipient is short by more than their own bank’s published incoming fee, something happened in the middle.
Then look at the paperwork. The recipient’s bank statement or credit advice sometimes lists the deduction separately. A payment confirmation from your bank that shows the charge type (OUR, SHA or BEN) tells you whether a shortfall was expected. One provider’s guidance for a shortfall is to check the charge type first, then get either a bank statement showing the net amount credited or a credit advice that lists the intermediary deduction.
Currency can muddy things. If the conversion happened at the end, the shortfall might be a rate markup rather than a fee. You can compare against the mid-market rate on a page like GBP to INR (rates refreshed hourly), but remember it only shows the middle, not what any bank will quote you.
The same wire three ways (made-up figures)
Take a hypothetical sender, Marcus, who needs 5,000 USD to land in an overseas account. All the figures here are illustrative. His bank charges 30 USD to send, a middle bank takes 20 USD, and the recipient’s bank takes 12 USD for an incoming wire. Choosing OUR adds a further 25 USD at his end.
SHA. Marcus pays 5,000 + 30 = 5,030 USD in total. The middle bank takes 20 and the receiving bank takes 12, so the recipient is credited 5,000 – 20 – 12 = 4,968 USD. Combined, 62 USD went in fees.
OUR, best case. Marcus pays 5,000 + 30 + 25 = 5,055 USD. Everything is covered and the recipient is credited 5,000. Combined cost: 55 USD.
OUR, unlucky case. The receiving bank still takes its 12 despite the instruction. The recipient is credited 4,988 and the combined cost is 67 USD, with Marcus out 5,055.
Two lessons. OUR doesn’t necessarily cost more overall; it mostly moves the bill to the person who chose the route. And the damage depends on the size of the payment: the same 20 USD middle-bank deduction is 10% of a 200 USD payment, 2% of 1,000, 0.4% of 5,000 and 0.04% of 50,000. A fixed fee hits small payments hardest.
What to ask before you send
- “Can I choose OUR, and what does it cost?” Get the price in writing or on screen.
- “Will this go through any intermediary banks, and do you know which?” Many banks can’t say for certain until the payment is processed, and that’s a fair answer to note.
- “Does the recipient’s bank charge for incoming wires?” The recipient should ask their own bank, since this is separate from everything you pay.
- “Will I get a SWIFT tracking reference?” This is the UETR, the unique end-to-end reference that lets the payment be followed.
- “If the recipient comes up short, what’s your process and how long does it take?”
If your bank won’t offer OUR, Flywire’s advice to its customers is to choose SHA and add about 30 USD to the payment to cover possible deductions. That’s one company’s rule of thumb for its own setup, not a universal figure, but the idea of padding the amount is sound when the recipient has to receive an exact sum, such as a tuition invoice.
And ask yourself the other question: does it need to be a wire? If the sender and recipient can both use a service that pays out locally in the destination country, the middle banks may not be in the picture at all. That’s a trade-off covered in the separate guide on wire transfers versus online services, and it applies to some routes more than others. For US-dollar payments, the USD page is a handy place to see what the rate looks like against different currencies.
If the money is already short: trace it, then ask
Begin with your sending bank, not the recipient’s. They are your counterparty and they hold the payment record. Give them the date, amount, the recipient’s details and the reference. Ask for the payment’s UETR and ask which bank took the deduction.
Swift’s gpi service is designed for exactly this. Its pay-and-trace tool provides traceability on processing times, the number of intermediaries and the fees charged at each stage, and gives reasons if a payment is rejected. Your payment only appears there if every bank on the route takes part. Ebury says not all payments appear on the gpi tool.
Once you know who took the money, ask your bank to raise an investigation. If you chose OUR and the payment was still reduced, you have a clear complaint: you paid to prevent it. Providers describe the process as tracing the payment through the intermediary, confirming the deduction and arranging a refund if one applies. MarTrust, one such provider, says refund timing depends on how quickly the intermediary responds and that it can’t guarantee recovery. Ebury says it has no authority to recover other banks’ fees. Your outcome may be partial, slow or nil.
If you sent from the United States, the CFPB’s remittance rules let you report an error on a covered transfer within 180 days, after which the provider has 90 days to look into it. Whether a missing deduction counts as an error depends on what was disclosed to you beforehand, so keep the pre-payment disclosure. Elsewhere, ask your bank about its complaints process and the relevant regulator or ombudsman.
Keep copies of everything: the confirmation, the payment reference, the recipient’s statement. A claim without a statement showing the net amount credited is hard to pursue.
This is general information, not legal or financial advice. Practice differs by bank and by route, so check with your own provider.
Sources
- What are intermediary fees? (Ebury)
- Why was a SWIFT or wire fee charged? (OFX)
- What fee arrangements are available for SWIFT transactions? (AMINA)
- What do OUR, DEBT, BEN, CRED and SHA, SHAR mean? (Flywire)
- Setting the charge bearer for a SWIFT wire (Modern Treasury)
- Swift Payment Fees (Currencycloud)
- Charges applicable, Article 62 PSD2 (Lewik)
- Swift gpi (Swift)
- What to do if the beneficiary receives less than expected (MarTrust)
- Money transfer frequently asked questions (CFPB)
Checked: November 2026
