pain.001 ISO 20022 message
Published on
21/07/2025
Updated on
21/07/2025
Reading time
3 min
pain.001 ISO 20022 message: Definition
The pain.001 ISO 20022 message is a transaction notification sent by customers of a bank. Companies or private persons use this message to give an order to the bank to carry out a transaction. One pain.001 message can be used to commission multiple payments to multiple recipients. The abbreviation “pain” is short for “payment initiation”.
pain.001 ISO 20022 message: Scope
The pain.001 ISO 20022 message in XML-format is used internationally as part of the ISO 20022 standard to commission payments . The message is divided into two parts. The first part with the name “Group Header” contains general information about the message and can include details about the commissioner among other things.
The second part with the name “Payment Information” contains detailed information about the transactions. This part starts with general information about the payments in the message, e. g. the payment method, the number of transactions the message includes or the banking details of the debitor (The party who wants to make the payments). After that, all the transactions are listed with their creditor (recipient) and more details about the transaction including the amount of the payment. When pain.001 is used in different countries (e.g. in the german banking industry), the format my have deviations.
With the mandatory fields of the format, the pain.001 message contains all the information required for the Verification Of Payee (VOP) process.
pain.001 ISO 20022 message: Usage
General
pain.001: general usage
The pain.001 message ist sent by customers to their Payment Service Provider (PSP). The format is used for payment commissions in transactions which comply with the ISO 20022 standard.
SEPA SCT
The pain.001 message is used as payment instruction between debitor and bank by SEPA SCT.
pain.001: usage in SEPA SCT
SEPA SCT Inst
The pain.001 message is used as payment instruction between debitor and bank by SEPA SCT Inst.
pain.001: usage in SEPA SCT Inst
Verification Of Payee
From October 2025, the pain.001 message will be used for Verification Of Payee (VOP) by standard and real time SEPA transactions. The pain.001 message will be sent to a RVM (Routing and/or Verification Mechanism) like a VOP request and receive a confirmation. Every payment commission in the pain.001 message will be handled like an individual VOP request by the RVM. Every payment’s recipient’s name will be verified by using VOP matching according to the VOP rules.
Variant 1: Payment transaction to a customer of another bank
The pain.001 message is sent to the bank and from there sent to the RVM working for the bank. The bank’s RVM sends every payment commission in the pain.001 message to the RVM of the recipient’s bank as a VOP request.
pain.001: usage in VOP
Variant 2: Payment transaction to a customer of the same bank
The pain.001 message is sent to the bank and from there sent to the RVM working for the bank. The bank’s RVM processes every payment commission in the pain.001 message as a VOP request and returns a pain.002 message which includes all the VOP responses.
pain.001: usage in VOP