How to order transfers

Standard or instant credit transfers may be ordered in branches or through the various digital channels that member payment service providers make available to their customers (e.g. homebanking or smartphone app).

For more information on the terms of use of this service, along with the channels on which it is provided, each customer should consult his/her respective payment service provider.

Data needed to make a transfer

To make a transfer, payer customers must provide their payment service provider with the following information:

Their data (name or denomination and/or IBAN of their payment account);
The amount of the credit transfer;
The payee’s data through:
- the IBAN of the payee’s payment account; or
- the payee’s mobile phone number (for natural persons) or legal person identification number (LPIN) (for legal persons) by using the SPIN functionality.
The submission information, if applicable (for example, a description of the operation).

IBAN (International Bank Account Number)

The IBAN makes it possible to identify and validate a payment account in the SEPA area and can contain up to 34 characters.

In the Portuguese case, the IBAN has 25 characters and begins with PT50, followed by the 21 digits that correspond to the bank identification number (NIB): the first four digits indicate the payment service provider where the account is domiciled, followed by four digits for additional information on the provider, 11 digits corresponding to the account number and two control digits.

SPIN (with mobile phone number/LPIN)

The SPIN functionality allows (standard or instant) transfers to be initiated with the payee’s mobile phone number or legal person identification number (LPIN) instead of the IBAN.

SPIN can be used through the channels already offered by payment service providers to make transfers and has no additional costs, i.e. a transfer initiated using SPIN must cost the same as a transfer initiated using the IBAN.

To receive transfers to their account using this functionality, customers have to link their mobile phone number (for natural persons) or legal person identification number (LPIN) (for legal persons) to SPIN.

For SPIN purposes, a specific customer identifier (mobile phone number or LPIN) can only be linked to a single IBAN (the IBAN of the account where the user will receive transfers initiated using this identifier). Whenever they so wish, payment service users may change or terminate the link between their identifier (mobile phone number or LPIN) and their payment account’s IBAN.

For more information on this functionality, please visit SPIN and FAQ - SPIN on the Banco de Portugal’s website.

After entering the payee’s IBAN or mobile phone number/LPIN, customers will see the name of the first holder (in the case of a natural person) or corporate name/trading name (in the case of a legal person) of the account to which the payer intends to make the transfer. This functionality allows customers to obtain information about the payee of the (standard or instant) transfer before authorising it, providing greater security to the transaction.

Time limits for the reception of the transfer order

The legally established time limits are recorded in business days, i.e. days on which payment service providers are open to carry out payment transactions, and count from the moment the order is received by the payment service provider.

If the standard transfer order is made on a non-business day, or after the time set by the payment service provider to consider the order as received on a business day, the order is deemed to be received on the following business day.

In this regard, the following are considered to be non-business days: Saturdays, Sundays, national holidays and bank holidays provided for in the banking sector’s Collective Bargaining Agreement. The bank holidays that do not coincide with national holidays are Carnival Tuesday and 24 December.

A transfer order that has been refused by the payment service provider because it does not meet all the conditions previously agreed with the payer shall be deemed not to have been received.

In the case of instant transfers, the reception of the order is instant.

Time limits for carrying out the transaction

For standard transfers between accounts of the same payment service provider (intrabank transfers), the beneficiary’s account must be credited on the day of receipt of the order and the funds made available immediately.

For standard transfers between payment accounts based in different payment service providers (interbank transfers), the funds must be credited to the beneficiary’s payment service provider account by the end of the business day following the receipt of the order. In these cases, the beneficiary’s payment account must be credited immediately and the funds made available on the same day. This time limit is applicable to:

Standard domestic interbank transfers (where both payment service providers are established in Portuguese territory);
Standard cross-border intra-Community transfers (between payment service providers located in the SEPA area).

In the case of standard interbank transfers ordered in paper form, the time limit can be extended by one additional business day.

In the case of standard transfers between payment accounts based in different payment service providers (interbank transfers), there are two exceptions to the credit rule and the availability of funds in the beneficiary’s account on the first business day following the receipt of the order: Easter Monday and 26 December.

On these days, the credit and funds can only be made available on the following business day, as TARGET is closed. TARGET is the Eurosystem settlement system in which payment transactions between payment service providers are processed.

Other TARGET holidays, like other TARGET closing days (Saturdays and Sundays), have no impact on the credit and availability of funds in user payment accounts, since they coincide with national public holidays or bank holidays.

In standard non-SEPA intra-Community transfers made in the currencies of non-euro area Member States, the same time limits for standard interbank transfers in euro shall apply, unless otherwise agreed. In any case, the beneficiary’s account must be credited within a maximum of four working days.

In the case of instant transfers, the time limit on providing the funds in the beneficiary’s account is ten seconds, irrespective of the time and day the transfer was made or of the payment service provider participating in the transaction.

For the other transfers, no rules regarding the execution deadlines are defined. The information on the time limits practiced by each payment service provider may be consulted in the respective price list, which must be made available for consultation by customers in all branches and places of public service.

Price of transfers

The payer and the beneficiary may only be charged the costs invoiced by the respective payment service provider.

As a rule, the prices of standard and instant transfers are freely defined by the payment service providers. However, the price of an instant transfer may not be higher than that of a standard transfer carried out in the same circumstances.

Fees may not be charged for transfers via payment applications operated by third parties (e.g. MB WAY) where one of the following limits is not exceeded:

€30 per transfer; or
€150 transferred via the application within a period of one month; or
25 transfers within a period of one month.

For example, per month, a customer may make 25 transfers of €6 each or five transfers of €30 each free of charge using MB WAY.

If the customer exceeds the limits mentioned above (e.g. by making a transfer of more than €30), the payment service provider may charge a fee, which, nevertheless, must not exceed:

0.2% of the transaction value for debit card-based transactions or instant transfers;
0.3% of the transaction value for credit card-based transactions.

Payment service providers are obliged to appropriately advertise the price of these transfers in price lists made available to the public so as to ensure that the interested parties are given prior knowledge to be able to evaluate the conditions offered in the market.

The price charged for interbank credit transfers is usually lower when the payer provides the beneficiary’s IBAN since the transactions can be processed through automated data transmission systems without additional intervention.

As long as the customer communicates the IBAN of the beneficiary’s payment account, charges for cross-border credit transfers made in euro, Swedish kronor or Romanian lei, and within the European Economic Area, may not be higher than those charged by the payment service provider for equivalent domestic bank transfers (in the same amount and in the same currency, made through the same channel, with the same characteristics and the same type).

Therefore, where equivalent domestic transactions carry no charge, charges associated with the execution of cross-border credit transfers are not permitted.

Payments Transfers

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