What is a UETR?

A UETR has 32 letters and digits in five groups of 8, 4, 4, 4 and 12, joined by hyphens: 36 characters in all. Only the digits 0 to 9 and the letters a to f appear. Technically it is a version 4 UUID, the format defined in IETF RFC 4122 and now RFC 9562.

Banks sometimes print it in capitals or without the hyphens. It is still the same UETR, and SWIFTarius reads it in any of these forms, with the 121: prefix copied from an MT103, or inside a pasted MT103.

Look at the payment confirmation or advice your bank gives you after sending the payment. The reference is usually labelled UETR. In online banking, open the payment’s details or download its SWIFT confirmation, often called the MT103 copy.

In an MT103: field 121

In an MT103, the UETR is field 121 of the user header (block 3), the block that starts with {3:. The message text itself, with fields such as :20: and :32A:, comes after it.

{1:F01…}{2:I103…}{3:{121:cf935c67-a3ac-4d58-b2fc-bf2267a14ecd}}
{4:
:20:REF58213
:32A:261026USD48200,00
…

In a pacs.008: PmtId › UETR

In the ISO 20022 pacs.008 message, the UETR sits in the payment identification of each transaction, next to the end-to-end ID.

<CdtTrfTxInf>
  <PmtId>
    <EndToEndId>INV-58213</EndToEndId>
    <UETR>cf935c67-a3ac-4d58-b2fc-bf2267a14ecd</UETR>
  </PmtId>
  …
</CdtTrfTxInf>

Ask your bank

If you cannot find it, ask your bank for “the UETR of my transfer” and give the amount, the currency and the date. Your bank has the UETR of each SWIFT payment it sends for you.

A payment carries several references. The UETR is the one with 36 characters and four hyphens; these others are easy to mistake for it:

Yes. A UETR works for whoever has it, so the recipient can track the payment as well as the sender. Ask the sender for the UETR or for the MT103 copy, then check it in SWIFTarius the same way.

The recipient’s bank sees incoming SWIFT payments by their UETR, and SWIFT gpi includes an inbound tracking service that banks can offer their corporate clients.

To keep a counterparty informed without screenshots, send them a SWIFTarius counterparty link. It opens in their language, shows the status and never shows the amount.

Ask for it by name and in writing, with the details of the payment: “Please send me the UETR (field 121) of my payment of USD 48,200.00 sent on 26 October 2026.” Since November 2018 the UETR has been a mandatory field of the MT103, and the pacs.008 carries it as well, so a SWIFT customer payment sent since then has one.

• Ask for the MT103 copy, also called the SWIFT confirmation: the UETR is field 121 of its user header (block 3).
• Ask the recipient: their bank received the payment with its UETR.
• If you paid through a payment provider, ask the provider for the UETR of the SWIFT payment it sent.

Yes, with the people involved in the payment. A UETR is a reference, not a password: nobody can move money, debit an account or change the payment with it.

Anyone who holds a UETR can look up the payment’s status, so treat it like an order number: share it with the sender, the recipient and their banks, and keep it out of public posts.

Send the UETR to @swiftarius_bot, with the amount and value date if you have them: they help find the payment. SWIFTarius shows what banks report about the payment, each report with its status code, reason code and time, in plain words. The first check is free.

What the codes mean: SWIFT gpi status codes in plain words. All the ways to follow a payment: how to track a SWIFT payment.

• SWIFT: Swift GPI. SWIFT gpi introduced the UETR for tracking; the gpi Tracker and inbound tracking
• SWIFT: Universal confirmations. Banks that receive MT103 and pacs.008 payments confirm their outcome
• IETF: RFC 9562: Universally Unique IDentifiers (UUIDs). The UUID version 4 format; RFC 9562 replaces RFC 4122

Sources accessed 30 October 2026.