What are BEN, SHA, OUR payment instructions?

When you make an international wire transfer you can choose who pays the transfer charges.
BEN, SHA, OUR are codes in a SWIFT instruction, at field 71A "Details of Charges".

• OUR instruction means you pay all transfer charges. We receive all your payment.
• SHA (shared) means you only pay your bank's outgoing transfer charge. We receive your payment minus the correspondent (intermediary) bank charges.
• BEN (beneficiary) means you do not pay any charge. We receive your payment minus all transfer charges.

We require all international transfers to us to be made with the OUR instruction. In case of receiving a transfer with SHA instructions, we will credit the amount actually received by our bank (field 32A, according to MT103 SWIFT).
The only exception is EU-payments in EUR (SEPA transfers) which can be made with SHA instruction.