Ordering Customer

The ordering customer is the person or organisation that instructs its bank to send a payment and whose account is debited for it. The term is used mostly in correspondent banking and SWIFT messaging, where the ordering customer is the original payer in a chain that also includes the ordering institution, any intermediaries, the beneficiary's bank and the beneficiary customer. In an MT103 customer credit transfer, the ordering customer appears in field 50, with an account number and either a name and address or an identifier. In ISO 20022 messages such as pacs.008, the same party is called the debtor. Rules on wire transfer transparency, based on FATF standards, require accurate ordering customer details to travel with the payment so that banks along the chain can screen it against sanctions lists and trace its origin. In everyday language the ordering customer is simply the payer or originator.