Category 6: Commodities and reference data
MT608 Statement of a Commodity Account
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The MT608 is the statement of a commodity account, such as a gold or silver account. The account servicing institution sends it to the account owner, or its authorised agent, listing every booking on the account in the period, whether it came from a Swift message or not, with opening and closing balances.
- Message type
- MT608
- Category
- 6
- Status
- In the current standard
- ISO 20022
- No direct equivalent
What MT608 is used for
Its layout is close to the cash statement MT950, but balances and entries are in commodity units, not currency: fields 60a, 62a, 64 and 65 carry a unit code such as FOZ (fine troy ounce) or KLO (kilo) where a cash statement has a currency, and the unit must be the same in all balances of the message. Field 26C identifies the commodity and the account.
A long statement is split over several messages: field 28 numbers them, the first carries the first opening balance in 60F and the following ones an intermediate balance in 60M. Reconciliation teams match the entries in field 61 against the MT606 and MT607 advices and the MT604 orders.
- Sent by
- The institution that services the commodity account
- Sent to
- The commodity account owner or its authorised agent
MT608 format: sequences and fields
Message text (block 4)Mandatory
No sequences. Field 61 and field 65 repeat.
| Tag | Name | Status | Format | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 | Transaction Reference Number | M | 16x | The Sender’s own reference for the commodity transaction. It must not start or end with a slash or contain two slashes together. |
| 26C | Identification of the Commodity and the Commodity Account | M | [3!a]/15x/5!a4!a[4x][//8x] | The commodity and the account this statement covers. |
| 25 | Further Account Identification | O | 35x | More detail on the commodity account the statement relates to. |
| 28 | Statement Number/Sequence Number | M | 5n[/2n] | The statement number, then the number of this message within the statement, for example 235/01 and 235/02. |
| 60a | Opening BalanceOptions F or M | M | F: 1!a6!n3!a15d M: 1!a6!n3!a15d | Debit or credit mark, date, commodity unit and quantity of the opening balance. Option F in the first message of a statement, option M in the following ones. It must equal the closing balance of the previous message. |
| 61 | Statement LineRepeatable | O | 6!n[4!n]2a[1!a]15d1!a3!c16x[//16x] [34x] | One booking: value date, optional entry date, debit or credit mark, quantity, transaction type and code, the account owner’s reference, the servicer’s reference and optional details. |
| 62a | Closing BalanceOptions F or M | M | F: 1!a6!n3!a15d M: 1!a6!n3!a15d | The closing balance, final (F) on the last message of the statement or intermediate (M) when more messages follow. |
| 64 | Closing Available Balance | O | 1!a6!n3!a15d | The quantity available to the account owner at the close, with debit or credit mark, date and unit. |
| 65 | Forward Available BalanceRepeatable | O | 1!a6!n3!a15d | The quantity that will be available on a future date, one occurrence per date. |
Format notation: n digits, a upper-case letters, c upper-case letters and digits, x any character of the Swift character set, d a decimal number with a comma, ! fixed length, [ ] optional, 4*35x up to 4 lines of 35 characters. M mandatory, O optional, C conditional (a rule decides).
ISO 20022
No ISO 20022 equivalent: Swift’s MT and MX equivalence tables list none for the category 6 commodity messages. Category 6 was not part of the November 2025 move of cross-border payment instructions to ISO 20022, so the message is still exchanged as MT on Swift.
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