China payments: SWIFT BIC codes will be required for RMB payments to mainland China from 6 December 2020

Last updated: 23 November 2020

Beginning 6 December 2020, SWIFT Business Identifier Codes (SWIFT BIC) will be required when making Priority Payments to mainland China in Chinese Yuan (RMB). The SWIFT BIC will be used in place of the China National Automatic Payment System (CNAPS) code.

What’s changing?

From 6 December, your RMB Priority Payments to China will need to include a SWIFT BIC instead of the CNAPS code.

We recommend that you provide a valid beneficiary SWIFT BIC when creating your payment instructions to help avoid payment delays or rejections.

Here’s where to include the SWIFT BIC in HSBCnet:

(select image to enlarge)

What do I need to do?

From 6 December, a SWIFT BIC must be included in your RMB payments going to China. To include a SWIFT BIC in your payments, you (or another user in your organisation with the correct payment permissions) review your payments as follows:

• Payments created on-screen or via templates:
  From 6 December, when creating RMB payments to China, select ‘SWIFT-BIC’ in the Beneficiary bank field before entering in the beneficiary bank SWIFT BIC. You can use the ‘Find beneficiary identifier’ feature to look up beneficiary bank SWIFT BIC as well.
• Forward-dated payments and Standing instructions:
  Make sure that you review any Forward-dated payments or Standing instructions you’ve set up in HSBCnet and, if required, update them to include a SWIFT BIC instead of a CNAPS code before 6 December.
• File upload or HSBC Connect:
  From 6 December, when you submit payment files using File upload or HSBC Connect, you must include the beneficiary SWIFT BIC in place of the CNAPS code in your payment files.

  If you have any questions about submitting these payments, please contact your local Client Services representative.

Reminder: when you update a restricted template, Standing instruction, or Forward-dated payment you’ll need to have another user approve the changes in the Authorisation summary service before the updates will be applied.

Find out more

If you have any questions, please contact your local HSBCnet Support Centre.