MT940 vs CAMT.053 — what's the difference?
If you run the bookkeeping for a European business, you will eventually meet both formats. Here is the honest, accountant's-eye comparison.
One paragraph each
MT940 is the classic SWIFT statement format. It is plain text built from tags — the transaction data lives in a “:61:” line followed by a free-text “:86:” narrative. Almost every European business bank still exports it, but it is being retired on a rolling schedule through 2028.
CAMT.053 is the ISO 20022 successor. It is XML, and it separates concerns MT940 can't: booking dates from value dates, the debtor or creditor name and account as real fields (RltdPties), and a standardized transaction classification. Those structured fields are often more complete than a bank's own quick CSV export, which tends to flatten or drop them. The trade-off is that the format is verbose — which is exactly why a converter is useful.
Side by side
| Aspect | MT940 | CAMT.053 |
|---|---|---|
| Age and status | SWIFT text format from the 1980s; being retired by European banks through 2028 | ISO 20022 XML standard; the format banks are actively migrating to |
| Structure | Tag-based text lines (:61: transactions, :86: narratives) | Typed XML: separate elements for amounts, dates, parties, balances |
| Counterparty data | Only when the bank puts it in the :86: narrative as structured subfields | Dedicated Dbtr/Cdtr elements with names and account numbers |
| Transaction classification | No standardized classification | BkTxCd domain/family/sub-family codes (e.g. PMNT/RCDT/ESCT) |
| Readability for people | Compact but cryptic | XML is verbose; both need conversion before they are useful in a spreadsheet |
| What a converter can do | Parse tags; extract counterparties where the bank uses ?NN subfields | Map structured fields directly — cleaner output with less guessing |
Which should you care about?
Short answer: the one your bank gives you today, and the one your accounting software accepts tomorrow. If your software imports MT940 and your bank is switching to CAMT.053 — or the reverse — you need conversion. The migration is already underway: banks are defaulting many new business accounts to CAMT.053 delivery, with full MT940 retirement now expected around 2027–2028.