Different people at the receiving end need different pieces of paper. Work out which of the three moments you are in first.
Which of the three moments this is
- Your recipient is at her phone asking "are you sure it went?" She wants to see for herself that the money is on its way. A screenshot is enough.
- Your recipient is at the bank counter and the teller cannot find the transfer. Start with the reference in your app. If that is not enough, the bank needs the one that came through the international network.
- The receiving bank is holding the transfer and asking for formal proof it went. The bank wants the record of the payment from the sending bank. A screenshot does not clear the hold.
Moment one: the screenshot she needs
Open the transfer inside your app and screenshot the confirmation screen, not the home screen where it just says "Sent". Four things have to be visible on the screenshot: the amount, the recipient's name as you typed it, the reference number, and the date and time.
If you cannot fit all four on one screen, take two screenshots. Send both.
Moment two: the reference-number tangle
You often have more than one reference for a single transfer. The app's own reference is the short one you and she use between yourselves. If the receiving bank asks for something longer, it wants a SWIFT reference. SWIFT is the network banks use to move money across borders. The reference itself is called a UETR: 36 characters, generated by the sending bank, and it follows the transfer through every bank on the way. Ask your provider for it if the bank on the other side asks by name.
The teller may not know the word "UETR". If so, say "the SWIFT reference" and give the same code.
Moment three: the formal hold
If the receiving bank is holding the transfer and asking for the SWIFT paperwork, it wants the record the sending bank produced when it sent the money. Only the sending bank can generate it. Ask your app or bank for a copy, ask what it costs, and forward it to the receiving bank.
This record has more than one name. The receiving bank may say MT103, which is the older name. Since 22 November 2025, SWIFT payments between countries have used a newer message called pacs.008. Your bank may use that name, or say "SWIFT confirmation". Ask for it by any of these names.
Revolut says its transfer confirmation PDF includes this document for SWIFT transfers, so look there first.
When the transfer did not go by SWIFT
Not every transfer goes over SWIFT. Wise, for example, uses SWIFT for some currencies and its own network for others. When the transfer did not go over SWIFT, there is no SWIFT record to ask for, under either name. With Wise, you can send the PDF transfer confirmation (Get transfer confirmation in the web app, Get PDF receipt on iPhone, Download transfer receipt on Android) plus the tracking link for the transfer, which shows where the money is.
If the receiving bank still refuses to accept anything but this SWIFT record, the transfer did not touch its inbound SWIFT queue at all. The provider will have to write to the bank directly. If your provider will not, the escalation letter is the next move.
First, is this actually a proof problem
Before sending any of this, check that it is a proof problem and not a delivery one. If your app says the transfer is complete but nothing has arrived, start with the transfer says complete but has not arrived. If the app says the transfer was cancelled and no refund shows, see the cancelled-transfer piece. If the receiving bank stopped it over a name mismatch, that is a different fix and lives on the name-mismatch piece.
Corrections
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said most UK banks produce an MT103 within a few working days and some charge a small investigation fee. Boki found no UK bank page that shows this, so the line is gone and the page now says to ask what it costs. The page also now says SWIFT payments moved to a newer message, pacs.008, on 22 November 2025, so your bank may use that name. The earlier version said Wise emails your recipient a public tracker link, and it gave one label for the PDF receipt in the Wise app. Wise's help pages say it emails the recipient a confirmation, and Boki found no current page that says this email has a tracking link. The page now says only that you can send the tracking link, and it gives the iPhone and Android labels. The earlier version said a Revolut user probably already has the MT103, and that the formal proof is a document from the network. Revolut does not give this PDF for every transfer, so the page now says to look there first, and it says the record comes from the sending bank. The earlier version said most branch staff have never heard the word "UETR", and that saying "the SWIFT reference" usually works. Boki has no source for either line, so both are gone.
- 2026-08-01: An earlier version of this page said most UK banks produce an MT103 "inside a working day". The available evidence (Wise's own MT103 explainer, third-party guidance) points to a few working days as more typical for UK banks, and no bank publishes a same-working-day SLA for retail MT103 copies. The sentence has been softened to "within a few working days", so a reader standing in a bank hall does not carry a same-day expectation her bank did not promise.