Overview camt messages

In ISO 20022 the abbreviation camt stands for Cash Management and denotes one of the largest message families in the standard. It ranges from the account statement through the payment recall to the management of liquidity in a real-time gross settlement system. This overview groups the practically relevant camt messages by purpose and shows in which environment each of them actually occurs.

Three areas of purpose

The family looks confusing at first because very different tasks sit under one abbreviation. Sorted by purpose, three groups remain:

• Account information and reporting – what has happened on the account: camt.052, camt.053, camt.054, camt.057 and the request message camt.060.
• Clarification, recall and investigation – what is wrong with an individual payment: camt.027, camt.029, camt.056, camt.087 and the new investigation messages camt.110 and camt.111.
• Account and liquidity management – queries and interventions during live operation of a payment system. This group is found almost exclusively in the TARGET environment.

Overview of usage

The table below shows where each message actually occurs. What governs is always the rulebook of the environment concerned: the fact that the standard defines a message does not mean a given scheme uses it. Use the buttons to select an environment; the table then shows only the corresponding column. Switzerland and the handling in EBICS are topics of their own and follow below.

The environments in detail

SEPA

In the SEPA area the pacs family carries the payments themselves; camt appears in two places. Between bank and customer these are the reporting messages camt.052, camt.053 and camt.054, which in Germany are governed by the DFÜ agreement and not by the European Payments Council rulebooks. In the interbank space these are the clarification messages around recall and investigation, which together with the R-transactions and the SEPA reason codes cover exception handling. The investigation messages camt.110 and camt.111 are explicitly not part of this.

TARGET (T2)

TARGET – T2 shows the family in its full breadth. Alongside the reports and the recall messages, the system uses a dedicated group of query and control messages: query accounts and transactions, set limits and reservations, retrieve business day information, transfer liquidity between accounts. CLM and RTGS differ in the detail – which message is admissible in which component is set out in the respective User Detailed Functional Specifications, published anew for each release. camt.998 is a special case: the standard deliberately leaves it open, and CLM uses it for procedures that have no ISO message of their own.

Swift CBPR+

In cross-border payments under Swift CBPR+, camt is confined to exception handling. camt.056 and camt.029 carry the recall through the Stop and Recall process, camt.110 and camt.111 the investigation through the Case Orchestrator – both components of Swift Case Management. Account reporting does not run on camt here, but on the statement formats established in the respective account relationship.

Switzerland

The Swiss Payment Standards issued by SIX cover only camt.052, camt.053 and camt.054 on the customer-to-bank leg. The request message camt.060 is explicitly outside the scope of their implementation guidelines. Recalls and investigations in Switzerland follow separate arrangements that are not part of those guidelines.

Handling in EBICS

EBICS is not a rulebook for camt messages but the transport route to them – and that distinction explains most of the misunderstandings. In EBICS you do not request the message; you retrieve an order type that carries the message concerned: C52 delivers camt.052, C53 delivers camt.053, C54 delivers camt.054. The period required is passed as a parameter of the retrieval.

From this follows the practically most important point of this overview: the request message camt.060 is not needed in EBICS and does not appear among the order types of the DFÜ agreement. To retrieve account information you choose the order type – not the message.

In Germany EBICS also serves the interbank space, for instance in the connection to the Deutsche Bundesbank's SEPA Clearer. On that leg the clarification messages camt.056, camt.029, camt.027 and camt.087 are transported. The control messages of the TARGET environment, by contrast, do not run over EBICS but over the channels of the TARGET Services.

Sources for specifications

• ISO 20022 – Message Definitions
• ECB – T2 User Detailed Functional Specifications, RTGS (PDF)
• ECB – T2 User Detailed Functional Specifications, CLM (PDF)
• Die Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft – data format specification (Appendix 3 of the DFÜ agreement)
• SIX – Swiss Payment Standards, Implementation Guidelines Cash Management (PDF)
• Swift – Case Management