What additional information do I need to make a payment to the UAE?

From 1 January 2019, payments to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are required by the UAE regulator to include the following information or they may be returned:

A code confirming the residency of the beneficiary - if the beneficiary is a UAE resident, please include the country code ‘AE’. Alternatively, please indicate the correct two digit country code from the list of country codes.

A purpose of payment code – This is a code describing the reason for the payment. You can find the full list of codes to choose from here (pages 15 to 21)

When making an online payment, please add these codes to line one of the ‘payment reference’ field, as follows:

 /BENEFRES/Resident Code//Purpose Code

 For example, if a salary payment is being made to a UAE resident, the information provided would be:

 /BENEFRES/AE//SAL

If you have any questions, please contact Coutts 24 on  +44 (0) 20 7957 2424