Your international payment is late. Here is how to find it and get it moving
It is Thursday. Your client emailed on Monday to say the payment had gone out, and attached a screenshot from their banking app. Your account is empty. Your bank's helpline tells you they cannot see anything until it arrives, which is not an answer. Somewhere between a bank in another country and your account, roughly a month's income is sitting still, and nobody will tell you where.
This is usually solvable, and it is solvable in a particular order. Most people begin by calling their own bank, which is the least useful first move - at that stage your bank may genuinely have nothing to look at. Start at the far end of the chain and work back towards yourself.
First, establish that the money actually left
A client saying they have paid is not evidence that a payment is in the system. Instructions get scheduled and never released. They wait on a second approver inside a finance team. They get rejected by the sending bank for a formatting problem the client never sees. Before anyone chases anything, you need proof of debit rather than proof of intent.
So ask your client for one specific document: the wire confirmation their bank issued, showing the amount actually debited and the date it was debited. If their bank calls it an MT103, that is exactly the right thing to ask for. A screenshot of a scheduled payment is not the same document, and the difference is usually where the missing days are hiding.
Get the reference that lets anyone trace it
That confirmation carries a unique end-to-end transaction reference, usually shortened to UETR - a long alphanumeric string that stays attached to the payment for its entire journey. It is the single most useful thing you can be holding. With it, your bank can query the payment inside the network instead of telling you to wait. Without it, everyone involved is guessing. Our guide to reading an MT103 walks through where to find it and what the other fields mean.
Send the client one line: please ask your bank for the MT103 or wire confirmation, including the UETR. Most corporate finance teams can produce it the same day. If a client cannot or will not, that is itself information.
Work out whether it is actually late
Inward wires to India commonly credit within one to three business days. That range is wider than it looks, because business days exclude weekends and public holidays at every stop - and a currency's home market has its own holidays. A payment sent late on a Thursday before a long weekend somewhere in the chain can be entirely healthy on day five.
Past about five business days with no explanation, stop waiting and start escalating. It is also worth knowing what your bank will soon owe you on timing: from October 2026 banks must credit an inward payment received during foreign exchange market hours the same business day, and tell you as soon as the payment message arrives. We covered what that rule does and does not promise separately - the short version is that it governs your bank's handling, not the days spent crossing the correspondent chain.
The four things that actually hold a payment up
Once a payment has genuinely left and is genuinely late, the cause is nearly always one of four things, and they are worth checking in this order because they differ enormously in how long they take to clear.
A missing or wrong purpose code. Your bank has to report an inward export receipt against a purpose code, and it cannot release the funds until it can do that correctly. This is the most common cause and the fastest to fix, because the fix is entirely yours: send the code and the invoice. Often the bank has already emailed you asking, and the message went to a spam folder or to an address you no longer read.
A beneficiary name mismatch. If your client typed a trading name and your account is in a registered legal name, or dropped the private limited suffix, the payment can be held pending confirmation. Character-level differences matter more than they reasonably should.
Missing supporting documents. For larger amounts or a first payment from a new client, your bank may want the invoice and the contract before crediting. Nothing moves until they have them.
A compliance or sanctions screen somewhere in the chain. Any bank the payment touches can pause it - often one you have no relationship with and cannot call. These take the longest and are the least visible, and they are frequently triggered by something incidental, such as a word in the payment reference. If the payment eventually comes back rather than landing, the same four causes are usually behind it, and we have set out why payments get rejected or returned and how to prevent a repeat.
What to ask your bank, in roughly these words
Generic chasing gets generic answers. Ask four specific questions instead, ideally by email so there is a record. Has the amount been credited to your nostro account, and on what value date? Is there a pending query or a hold against my account for this payment? If a document or a purpose code is outstanding, which one, and where do I send it? And if the funds have not reached you at all, will you raise a tracer against the UETR?
That last one matters. A tracer is a formal enquiry sent down the payment chain, and it is a request you are entitled to make once you can supply the reference. Branch staff will not always volunteer it.
What to ask your client
Four things, in one message. The MT103 or wire confirmation with the UETR. The exact date the amount was debited from their account. The charge option their bank used - shared charges mean intermediary banks deduct fees along the way, which does not delay a payment but does explain a short arrival. And the beneficiary name and account number exactly as they entered them, character for character, so you can check them against your own.
When it has been more than a week
Move it off the phone. Put a written complaint in through your bank's formal grievance channel rather than the branch, quote the UETR and the dates, and ask for a written response. Banks are required to run an internal escalation route above the first point of contact, and a documented complaint travels up it in a way a phone call does not. Ask your client to raise a parallel trace from the sending side at the same time, because the sending bank can chase the chain from a position you cannot reach.
The clock running in the background while you wait
A stuck payment is not only a cash flow problem. As an exporter you are required to realise and repatriate your export proceeds inside a set window, and a payment sitting in a correspondent bank does not pause it. For exports made between 5 June and 30 September 2026 that window is nine months. From 1 October 2026 the general window becomes fifteen months, or eighteen months where the export is invoiced or settled in Indian rupees.
A few weeks of delay will not put you near those limits. The reason to care is documentary: keep the invoice, the wire confirmation and your correspondence with the bank together, because if a payment ever fails to arrive you will need that trail, and reconstructing it a year later is miserable.
Stopping it happening again
Most repeat delays come from the same two places. Give your bank the purpose code and the invoice when the payment is sent rather than waiting to be asked, and put the exact registered beneficiary name on every invoice you issue so clients copy it correctly. Then keep your proof of receipt in order - knowing which of an FIRC, an FIRA or an e-BRC you actually need saves an argument later, particularly at GST refund time.
Where a collections account helps, and where it does not
A Winvesta Global Collections Account gives you local account details in USD, GBP and EUR, so your client pays domestically in their own country rather than sending a wire down a correspondent chain. That removes the leg where most unexplained delays happen, and it means you can see what has landed instead of ringing a helpline to ask.
It does not exempt you from anything on the India side. The receipt still has to be reported against the right purpose code, still needs documentation against the invoice, and still has to be realised inside your window. Shorter route, same compliance - and anyone promising you otherwise is overselling.
Disclaimer: The information provided in this blog is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or legal advice. Winvesta makes no representations or warranties about the accuracy or suitability of the content and recommends consulting a professional before making any financial decisions.
Get paid globally. Keep more of it.
No FX markups. No GST. Funds in 1 day.
Table of Contents
It is Thursday. Your client emailed on Monday to say the payment had gone out, and attached a screenshot from their banking app. Your account is empty. Your bank's helpline tells you they cannot see anything until it arrives, which is not an answer. Somewhere between a bank in another country and your account, roughly a month's income is sitting still, and nobody will tell you where.
This is usually solvable, and it is solvable in a particular order. Most people begin by calling their own bank, which is the least useful first move - at that stage your bank may genuinely have nothing to look at. Start at the far end of the chain and work back towards yourself.
First, establish that the money actually left
A client saying they have paid is not evidence that a payment is in the system. Instructions get scheduled and never released. They wait on a second approver inside a finance team. They get rejected by the sending bank for a formatting problem the client never sees. Before anyone chases anything, you need proof of debit rather than proof of intent.
So ask your client for one specific document: the wire confirmation their bank issued, showing the amount actually debited and the date it was debited. If their bank calls it an MT103, that is exactly the right thing to ask for. A screenshot of a scheduled payment is not the same document, and the difference is usually where the missing days are hiding.
Get the reference that lets anyone trace it
That confirmation carries a unique end-to-end transaction reference, usually shortened to UETR - a long alphanumeric string that stays attached to the payment for its entire journey. It is the single most useful thing you can be holding. With it, your bank can query the payment inside the network instead of telling you to wait. Without it, everyone involved is guessing. Our guide to reading an MT103 walks through where to find it and what the other fields mean.
Send the client one line: please ask your bank for the MT103 or wire confirmation, including the UETR. Most corporate finance teams can produce it the same day. If a client cannot or will not, that is itself information.
Work out whether it is actually late
Inward wires to India commonly credit within one to three business days. That range is wider than it looks, because business days exclude weekends and public holidays at every stop - and a currency's home market has its own holidays. A payment sent late on a Thursday before a long weekend somewhere in the chain can be entirely healthy on day five.
Past about five business days with no explanation, stop waiting and start escalating. It is also worth knowing what your bank will soon owe you on timing: from October 2026 banks must credit an inward payment received during foreign exchange market hours the same business day, and tell you as soon as the payment message arrives. We covered what that rule does and does not promise separately - the short version is that it governs your bank's handling, not the days spent crossing the correspondent chain.
The four things that actually hold a payment up
Once a payment has genuinely left and is genuinely late, the cause is nearly always one of four things, and they are worth checking in this order because they differ enormously in how long they take to clear.
A missing or wrong purpose code. Your bank has to report an inward export receipt against a purpose code, and it cannot release the funds until it can do that correctly. This is the most common cause and the fastest to fix, because the fix is entirely yours: send the code and the invoice. Often the bank has already emailed you asking, and the message went to a spam folder or to an address you no longer read.
A beneficiary name mismatch. If your client typed a trading name and your account is in a registered legal name, or dropped the private limited suffix, the payment can be held pending confirmation. Character-level differences matter more than they reasonably should.
Missing supporting documents. For larger amounts or a first payment from a new client, your bank may want the invoice and the contract before crediting. Nothing moves until they have them.
A compliance or sanctions screen somewhere in the chain. Any bank the payment touches can pause it - often one you have no relationship with and cannot call. These take the longest and are the least visible, and they are frequently triggered by something incidental, such as a word in the payment reference. If the payment eventually comes back rather than landing, the same four causes are usually behind it, and we have set out why payments get rejected or returned and how to prevent a repeat.
What to ask your bank, in roughly these words
Generic chasing gets generic answers. Ask four specific questions instead, ideally by email so there is a record. Has the amount been credited to your nostro account, and on what value date? Is there a pending query or a hold against my account for this payment? If a document or a purpose code is outstanding, which one, and where do I send it? And if the funds have not reached you at all, will you raise a tracer against the UETR?
That last one matters. A tracer is a formal enquiry sent down the payment chain, and it is a request you are entitled to make once you can supply the reference. Branch staff will not always volunteer it.
What to ask your client
Four things, in one message. The MT103 or wire confirmation with the UETR. The exact date the amount was debited from their account. The charge option their bank used - shared charges mean intermediary banks deduct fees along the way, which does not delay a payment but does explain a short arrival. And the beneficiary name and account number exactly as they entered them, character for character, so you can check them against your own.
When it has been more than a week
Move it off the phone. Put a written complaint in through your bank's formal grievance channel rather than the branch, quote the UETR and the dates, and ask for a written response. Banks are required to run an internal escalation route above the first point of contact, and a documented complaint travels up it in a way a phone call does not. Ask your client to raise a parallel trace from the sending side at the same time, because the sending bank can chase the chain from a position you cannot reach.
The clock running in the background while you wait
A stuck payment is not only a cash flow problem. As an exporter you are required to realise and repatriate your export proceeds inside a set window, and a payment sitting in a correspondent bank does not pause it. For exports made between 5 June and 30 September 2026 that window is nine months. From 1 October 2026 the general window becomes fifteen months, or eighteen months where the export is invoiced or settled in Indian rupees.
A few weeks of delay will not put you near those limits. The reason to care is documentary: keep the invoice, the wire confirmation and your correspondence with the bank together, because if a payment ever fails to arrive you will need that trail, and reconstructing it a year later is miserable.
Stopping it happening again
Most repeat delays come from the same two places. Give your bank the purpose code and the invoice when the payment is sent rather than waiting to be asked, and put the exact registered beneficiary name on every invoice you issue so clients copy it correctly. Then keep your proof of receipt in order - knowing which of an FIRC, an FIRA or an e-BRC you actually need saves an argument later, particularly at GST refund time.
Where a collections account helps, and where it does not
A Winvesta Global Collections Account gives you local account details in USD, GBP and EUR, so your client pays domestically in their own country rather than sending a wire down a correspondent chain. That removes the leg where most unexplained delays happen, and it means you can see what has landed instead of ringing a helpline to ask.
It does not exempt you from anything on the India side. The receipt still has to be reported against the right purpose code, still needs documentation against the invoice, and still has to be realised inside your window. Shorter route, same compliance - and anyone promising you otherwise is overselling.
Disclaimer: The information provided in this blog is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or legal advice. Winvesta makes no representations or warranties about the accuracy or suitability of the content and recommends consulting a professional before making any financial decisions.
Get paid globally. Keep more of it.
No FX markups. No GST. Funds in 1 day.