Character limitations in payments

Ensure that you consider the special characters that banks support when you create a payment. Within payment references and beneficiary names, different banks support:

• Different upper character limits.
• Different types of special characters.

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Basic approach to character limitations

Some banks have an upper limit of 18 characters for payment references and beneficiary names.

Additionally, different banks support different special characters (such as colons, dashes, or apostrophes).

This means that the simplest method to ensure your payment creation request works is to ensure your payment references and beneficiary names are under 18 characters and do not contain any special characters.

Character limits

Different banks have different character limits for payment references and beneficiary names.

Typically, the character limit for payment references is 18 characters.

Some banks support up to 35 or 40 characters for beneficiary names. However, as some banks only support up to 18 characters, you should consider this in your integration.

Special characters

All banks support basic latin characters in payment references and beneficiary names. Many banks support some special characters such as colons, dashes, or apostrophes.

Special character handling varies from bank to bank, so there's no consistent rule for special characters.

The table below displays the special characters supported by some popular banks.