pacs.010 ISO 20022 message
Published on
03/09/2026
Updated on
03/09/2026
Reading time
3 min
pacs.010 ISO 20022 message: Definition
pacs.010 ISO 20022 message stands for “Financial Institution Direct Debit”. With this ISO 20022 XML message, a credit institution collects an amount from the account of another credit institution – a direct debit in which both the payee and the payer are banks.
pacs.010 ISO 20022 message: Scope
The pacs.010 is the direct debit counterpart of the pacs.009 ISO 20022 message (financial institution credit transfer): whereas the pacs.009 pushes an amount from the sending bank to the receiving bank, the pacs.010 pulls an amount from the counterparty. Unlike the pacs.003 ISO 20022 message, which carries a customer direct debit (SEPA SDD) between banks, the pacs.010 has no customer as debtor or creditor – payer and payee are financial institutions, and the direct debit requires a direct debit mandate agreed between them.
Typical use cases are the collection of fees, interest or margin payments between banks, liquidity calls within a banking group, debits by central banks or ancillary systems, and the settlement of obligations arising from clearing and settlement agreements.
The following ISO 20022 messages are related to the pacs.010:
- pacs.002 ISO 20022 message – status report: acceptance/settlement (ACSC) or rejection (RJCT)
- camt.054 ISO 20022 message – debit/credit notification to the accounts involved
- camt.053 ISO 20022 message – end-of-day statement of account
- pacs.009 ISO 20022 message – bank-to-bank credit transfer, the opposite direction
- pacs.003 ISO 20022 message – customer direct debit between banks (SEPA SDD)
pacs.010 ISO 20022 message: Usage
General
The pacs.010 is used in high-value / individual payments – within the Eurosystem via T2 (TARGET2), worldwide via SWIFT in accordance with the CBPR+ usage guidelines. It does not appear in the SEPA schemes: SEPA SDD uses the pacs.003 exclusively for direct debits.
T2 (TARGET2) / RTGS
FinancialInstitutionDirectDebit – pacs.010.001.03
In the RTGS component of T2, the pacs.010 is the message with which one participant (creditor bank, instructing agent) debits the RTGS account of another participant (debtor bank, instructed agent). The prerequisite is a direct debit mandate granted by the debtor bank to the creditor bank and stored in the Common Reference Data (CRDM) – optionally with a maximum amount per collection and per day. T2 checks mandate and limit, executes the settlement (debit of the debtor account, credit to the creditor account) and confirms this to the creditor bank with a pacs.002. If there is no valid mandate or the limit is exceeded, the pacs.010 is rejected with a negative pacs.002. The debtor bank learns of the debit – depending on its message subscription – via a camt.054 and via the camt.053 statement of account. Central banks also use the pacs.010, for instance to debit fees or other amounts to their participants. The complete dialogue:
A pacs.010 cannot be refused by the debtor bank – control is exercised solely through the mandate and its limits. If a collection was made wrongly, the amount must be transferred back with a pacs.009.
SWIFT MX (CBPR+)
FinancialInstitutionDirectDebit – pacs.010.001.03
In global SWIFT payments, the pacs.010 is defined as a direct debit between financial institutions for which there was no direct equivalent in the MT standard (collections were settled bilaterally via MT202 there). It is mainly used in individual markets and banking groups and for fee and interest settlements between correspondent banks; here too, a bilaterally agreed mandate is a prerequisite. Collections in other currencies are possible via SWIFT.