pain.001 Format: Customer credit transfer initiation

pain.001 at a glance
Message	`pain.001`, root element `<CstmrCdtTrfInitn>`
Name	Customer credit transfer initiation
Sent	Account owner → bank
SWIFT MT counterpart	MT101
Read by	Payment File Viewer

Who sends it, and when

The company (the debtor, or a service centre initiating for it) uploads it to its bank through online banking, host-to-host, EBICS or SWIFT. The bank checks it and answers with one or more pain.002 status reports; the payments then show up on the camt.053 statement.

The structure of a pain.001

pain.001 · structure

Document
└─ CstmrCdtTrfInitn
   ├─ GrpHdr               MsgId, CreDtTm, NbOfTxs, CtrlSum, InitgPty
   └─ PmtInf               a block: one debtor account, date and payment type
      ├─ PmtInfId, PmtMtd (TRF), BtchBookg, NbOfTxs, CtrlSum
      ├─ PmtTpInf          SvcLvl (SEPA, URGP …), LclInstrm, CtgyPurp (SALA …)
      ├─ ReqdExctnDt, Dbtr, DbtrAcct, DbtrAgt, ChrgBr
      └─ CdtTrfTxInf       one per payment
         ├─ PmtId          InstrId, EndToEndId
         ├─ Amt/InstdAmt
         ├─ CdtrAgt, Cdtr, CdtrAcct
         └─ RmtInf         Ustrd (text) or Strd (structured reference)

Versions in use

Version .001.03, from 2009, is still the most widely used. Version .001.09, from 2019, is the one the EPC’s SEPA guidelines have been based on since March 2024 (customers could keep their existing files) and the one SWIFT’s CBPR+ uses; many banks accept both. In .001.09 the execution date is a choice of a date or a date and time (ReqdExctnDt/Dt or DtTm), and a BIC is <BICFI>. The viewer reads .001.02 to .001.13.

An annotated pain.001

An excerpt of the sample the viewer opens (fictitious companies, published test account numbers):

pain001-sepa.xml

<Document xmlns="urn:iso:std:iso:20022:tech:xsd:pain.001.001.03" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <CstmrCdtTrfInitn>
    <GrpHdr>
      <MsgId>NWT-PAY-20261030-01</MsgId>
      <CreDtTm>2026-10-29T09:12:00</CreDtTm>
      <NbOfTxs>3</NbOfTxs>
      <CtrlSum>6370.45</CtrlSum>
      …
    </GrpHdr>
    <PmtInf>
      <PmtInfId>PMT-20261030-01</PmtInfId>
      <PmtMtd>TRF</PmtMtd>
      <BtchBookg>true</BtchBookg>
      …
      <PmtTpInf>
        <SvcLvl>
          <Cd>SEPA</Cd>
        </SvcLvl>
      </PmtTpInf>
      …
      <CdtTrfTxInf>
        <PmtId>
          <InstrId>PMT-20261030-01-001</InstrId>
          <EndToEndId>NW-2026-311</EndToEndId>
        </PmtId>
        <Amt>
          <InstdAmt Ccy="EUR">2500.00</InstdAmt>
        </Amt>
        …
        <CdtrAcct>
          <Id>
            <IBAN>FR1420041010050500013M02606</IBAN>
          </Id>
        </CdtrAcct>
        <RmtInf>
          <Ustrd>Invoice 2026-311</Ustrd>
        </RmtInf>
      </CdtTrfTxInf>
      …

“…” marks lines left out.

pain.001 sample, explained
In the file	What it says
`<NbOfTxs>3 / <CtrlSum>6370.45`	Control totals: how many payments and their sum. Banks reject a file whose totals do not add up.
`<BtchBookg>true`	Book the block as one debit on the statement.
`<SvcLvl><Cd>SEPA`	A SEPA credit transfer: euro, IBANs, the SEPA character set.
`<EndToEndId>NW-2026-311`	Your reference: it reaches the payee and comes back on status reports and statements.
`<Ustrd>Invoice 2026-311`	Remittance text for the payee, 140 characters at most in SEPA.

Open this sample in the Payment File Viewer

To make one rather than read one, the SEPA XML Generator builds a SEPA pain.001 from a list of payments or a CSV, checked against the EPC rules, in your browser.

Common validation errors

What most often goes wrong in a pain.001, and the rule that reports it in the viewer and the API:

pain.sum.group (Group header control sum differs): The group header CtrlSum differs from the sum of the amounts.
pain.count.payment (Payment information count differs): A block’s NbOfTxs differs from its transactions.
iban.invalid (Invalid IBAN): A creditor IBAN that fails its check digits or country length.
ccy.decimals (Too many decimals for the currency): Too many decimals for the currency.
pain.duplicate.e2e (Duplicate end-to-end id): The same end-to-end id on two payments.
pain.date.past (Requested date in the past): A requested execution date in the past.
sepa.charset (Characters outside the SEPA set): Characters outside the SEPA set in a SEPA payment.

Check a pain.001 from a script or an AI agent

Scripts and AI agents can do the same without a browser: POST /api/v1/validate or the MCP tool validate_payment_file returns every issue with its rule id, severity, line and path, and whether the file is valid. No key is needed, and the file is processed in memory and never stored (API and MCP docs).

REST · curl

curl -s --data-binary @pain001-sepa.xml https://iso20022-navigator.com/api/v1/validate

MCP · tools/call

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 1,
  "method": "tools/call",
  "params": {
    "name": "validate_payment_file",
    "arguments": {
      "content": "<the file text>"
    }
  }
}