MT202
Message TypeMT202 is the legacy SWIFT FIN message for a general bank-to-bank funds transfer, now retired on the SWIFT network in favor of ISO 20022's pacs.009.
MT202 was SWIFT's FIN-format message for interbank transfers: settling FX trades, funding nostro accounts, and moving cover payments between banks. Because the base MT202 didn't carry the underlying customer's details, the MT202 COV variant was introduced in 2009 so intermediary banks could see a payment's true origin and destination for AML and sanctions screening — mandatory whenever an MT202 covered an MT103 customer transfer.
MT202 and MT202 COV are the direct legacy predecessors of pacs.009 and pacs.009 COV. Under SWIFT's migration timeline, the MT-to-ISO 20022 coexistence period for cross-border FI-to-FI payments ended on 22 November 2025: from that date such payments must be exchanged in ISO 20022 (MX) format, and legacy MT202/MT202 COV messages are handled only through limited contingency processing rather than native delivery.
Understanding MT202 explains why the migration matters: the old MT messages were free-text and data-poor, which is exactly the limitation that structured pacs.009 data — full parties, purpose codes, and remittance information — is designed to fix.
Crypto Relevance
MT202 (and now pacs.009) is the historical bank-to-bank rail that correspondent-banking-dependent crypto bridges such as XRP/ODL were built to complement or bypass — which is why ISO 20022's richer data model matters for crypto/fiat settlement interoperability.
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Join ISO 20022 investorsRelated Terms
MT103
MT103 is the legacy SWIFT free-text message used for single-customer cross-border transfers, being replaced by pacs.008 under ISO 20022 migration.
pacs.009
pacs.009 is the ISO 20022 message for a bank-to-bank credit transfer, where both the sender and receiver are financial institutions rather than end customers.
SWIFT
SWIFT is the messaging network connecting 11,000+ financial institutions in 200+ countries for cross-border payments, currently completing its ISO 20022 migration.
CBPR+
CBPR+ is the SWIFT-governed ISO 20022 standard that all banks must adopt for cross-border payments, replacing the legacy MT message suite.
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Last reviewed: 2026-07-01