Category 7: Documentary credits, guarantees and standby letters of credit
MT740 Authorisation to Reimburse
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The MT740 is the reimbursement authorisation for a documentary credit. The issuing bank sends it to the reimbursing bank, usually the bank that holds its account in the credit currency, to authorise it to honour reimbursement claims from the paying, accepting or negotiating bank and to debit the issuing bank’s account.
- Message type
- MT740
- Category
- 7
- Status
- In the current standard
- ISO 20022
- No direct equivalent
What MT740 is used for
When a credit names a reimbursing bank (field 53a of the MT700), the issuing bank sends that bank an MT740 with the credit number, the applicable reimbursement rules (field 40F), the amount and how the credit is available. The reimbursing bank sees only what it needs to pay claims, not the documents or goods.
The claiming bank then sends an MT742 Reimbursement Claim. If the claim does not match the authorisation, the reimbursing bank answers with an MT744. Changes to the authorisation, such as a new expiry or amount, go in an MT747. The reimbursement itself is a bank-to-bank payment, which on Swift is now an ISO 20022 pacs.009.
- Sent by
- The issuing bank
- Sent to
- The reimbursing bank
Fields
This is a catalogue entry: the field-by-field structure is not shown here because we publish structures only where we have checked them against public sources. Paste an MT740 into the parser to see each field decoded with its tag, name and value.
ISO 20022
No ISO 20022 equivalent in general use for the authorisation itself, which stays MT. The resulting reimbursement payment between banks is a bank-to-bank transfer, sent in ISO 20022 on Swift since November 2025.
MT740 questions
- Which rules apply to an MT740?
- Field 40F states the rules, usually the ICC Uniform Rules for Bank-to-Bank Reimbursements (URR) when the credit says so in its field 40E.
- Does the reimbursing bank check documents?
- No. A reimbursing bank pays claims against the authorisation in the MT740. Document examination stays with the nominated and issuing banks.
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