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SWIFT MT940 field

MT940 field :20: Transaction Reference Number

The first field of every MT940 and MT942: the bank’s own reference for this statement message. It identifies the message, not a transaction, despite its name.

:20: at a glance
:20: (mandatory)Transaction Reference Number: The sender’s reference for this statement message.
Format16x
MessageMT940 customer statement (also used by MT942 where the field exists there)
In camt.053Stmt/Id

Format

The format is written in SWIFT notation: 16x. n digits; a capital letters; c capital letters and digits; x any character of the SWIFT set; d a decimal amount with a comma; 16x up to 16 of them; 6!n exactly 6; [ ] optional; 6*65x up to 6 lines of 65.

Annotated example

From the sample MT940 the viewer opens with “Try a sample”:

MT940 · :20:
:20:STMT301P1
:20: example, part by part
PartMeaning
:20:The tag.
STMT301P1The reference, up to 16 characters: here statement 301, page 1.

Where it goes in camt.053

The MT940 Viewer and the API convert MT940 to camt.053.001.08. For this field:

:20: to camt.053.001.08
MT940camt.053.001.08Note
:20: Transaction ReferenceStmt/Id

Banks build the reference however they like, so do not parse meaning out of it; use :28C: for the statement number.

The whole mapping, field by field, is in camt.053 vs MT940.

Checks the viewer runs

  • mt.field.required: Mandatory field missing (SWIFT MT940/MT942 field specifications)
  • mt.field.length: Field too long (SWIFT MT940/MT942 field lengths)
  • mt.charset: Characters outside the SWIFT set (SWIFT FIN character set X)

Worth knowing

  • A statement starts at :20:. Text before the first :20: (outside a SWIFT envelope) is not part of a statement.
  • Must not start or end with a slash, or contain two slashes in a row (a general rule for SWIFT reference fields).

Read :20: from a script or an AI agent

Scripts and AI agents can do the same without a browser: POST /api/v1/parse or the MCP tool parse_mt940 returns every statement as JSON: balances, each :61: split into its subfields and each :86: with its structured parts. No key is needed, and the file is processed in memory and never stored (API and MCP docs).

REST · curl
curl -s --data-binary @statement.sta https://iso20022-navigator.com/api/v1/parse
MCP · tools/call
{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 1,
  "method": "tools/call",
  "params": {
    "name": "parse_mt940",
    "arguments": {
      "content": "<the file text>"
    }
  }
}