Pacs.004 Message

Overview

The beneficiary bank uses the pacs.004 message to trigger the return of a settled payment. One possible reason for the return of a settled payment is that the beneficiary bank account no longer exists.

The pacs.004 message must identify the returned payment. The UETR (Unique End-to-end Transaction Reference) and the end-to-end-id identify the payment a pacs.004 refers to.

Role in Payment Recall Workflows

In addition to unilateral returns (such as an account closed or blocked), the pacs.004 message serves as the positive response to an interbank payment recall initiated via camt.056. Under schemes such as SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT), if the beneficiary bank accepts the recall request, it transfers the funds back to the originator bank using a pacs.004 carrying return reason code FOCR (Following Cancellation Request). If the recall cannot be fulfilled (for example, if the customer refuses or legal restrictions apply), the beneficiary bank instead sends a camt.029 negative resolution.

Building Blocks of the Pacs.004

Like other payment messages in ISO20022, the pacs.004 contains 2 main parts. You can find the definition of the pacs.004 schema and its message definition report here.

GroupHeader

The GroupHeader will contain the set of characteristics that are common to all transactions contained in the pacs.004.

The most important of these is the MsgId which used to uniquely identify the message. It is mandatory and must be unique

Transaction Information

The transaction information sections of the pacs.004 will contain all of the information used to identify the transactions that are being returned. There are a number of mandatory elements which must be present.

• RtrId - Unique identification, as assigned by an instructing party for an instructed party, to unambiguously identify the returned transaction.
• OrgnlEndToEndId - Unique identification, as assigned by the original initiating party, to unambiguously identify the original transaction
• OrgnlUETR - Universally unique identifier to provide the original end-to-end reference of a payment transaction
• OrgnlInstrId - Unique identification, as assigned by the original instructing party for the original instructed party, to unambiguously identify the original instruction.