References and settlement method checkpoint
Check whether you can tell a reference safe to quote three banks later from one that isn't, and work out INGA or INDA from an account relationship.
QUESTIONS AS TEXT
Q1. A payment has passed through three banks, each replacing the instruction identification with one of its own. An investigator wants one reference that every one of those three banks recognises as the same transaction. Which should they ask for?
Answer: A: The end-to-end identification or the UETR — both travel unchanged through every hop.
Point-to-point references such as instruction identification exist for one bank and its immediate counterparty, and may be replaced at every hop. End-to-end identification and the UETR are deliberately built to do the opposite: assigned once, unchanged everywhere, which is exactly why tracking services and investigations are built around them.
Q2. What must be true of a payment's UETR, according to CBPR+ usage guidance?
Answer: A: It is generated once, as a version-4 UUID, and every later hop passes it on unchanged rather than generating a new one.
The UETR is a globally unique identifier in UUID version 4 format, created once for the payment — by the debtor's bank if the debtor did not supply one — and required to pass unchanged through every subsequent hop, which is what lets a tracking service show one payment's status across every bank it has touched.
Q3. Bank Alfa holds Meridian Bank's EUR account. Bank Alfa sends Meridian Bank a EUR payment message. What settlement method does this message carry?
Answer: A: INGA — Bank Alfa is the account-servicing bank and is also the one sending the message.
Settlement method comes from two questions: which bank services the account in the transfer currency, and is that bank the instructing or the instructed agent on this message? Bank Alfa services Meridian's EUR account and is sending the message, so it is the account-servicing bank acting as instructing agent — exactly the INGA case, meaning settlement already happened when Bank Alfa sent the message.
Q4. A payment message arrives with settlement method INDA. What does this tell the receiving bank about the money?
Answer: A: Nothing has settled yet — settlement is the next thing the receiving bank itself has to do, by posting to the account it services for the sender.
INDA means the instructed agent — whoever is receiving this message — is the one who services the account, so settlement has not happened yet: it happens only once that bank posts the entry after processing the message. This is exactly why a beneficiary bank cannot always safely credit a customer the instant a message like this lands; under INDA, crediting first is crediting ahead of the settlement it is itself responsible for making.