Payout descriptions

Learn how you can customize payout descriptions that appear on your users' bank statements.

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You can control the information that beneficiaries see on their bank statements when receiving transfers. This page explains how payout descriptors passed through the Adyen to the beneficiary's bank, and the customization options available for different payout products.

How payout descriptions work

When you initiate a transfer or configure a payout schedule, you can provide information in two primary fields: description and referenceForBeneficiary. These fields follow a multi-step journey through Adyen's system and the wider financial network:

Submission: You send the description and reference information using the Transfer API or Customer Area.
Transmission and processing: Adyen transmits the data through the financial network to the clearing system. The clearing system then processes this information and passes the description and reference details to the beneficiary's bank, based on the specific capabilities and character limits of that network.
Beneficiary statement: The beneficiary bank receives the information and determines how much of it to display on the your user's bank statement.

Payout descriptor components

A complete payout descriptor typically consists of the following:

Originator name: The name of the party instructing the transfer (for example, "sender name" or "debtor name"). At Adyen, this is either the name of Adyen's legal entity or your platform's legal entity, depending on the region. If the name your platform's legal entity is used, you can modify it by providing a Doing Business As name on the hosted onboarding page or by making a Legal Entity Management API request. In this case, you must reach out to your Adyen contact to set the new name as the originator name.
Remittance information: Free-text fields, including the description and referenceForBeneficiary.
Unique identifiers: Alpha-numeric and numeric identifiers used by banks and clearing systems to reconcile the transactions.

Scheduled payouts

For automated payouts (managed or custom), you can use static text or dynamic placeholders to ensure every scheduled transfer is recognizable to your user.

Description placeholders

Placeholders allow you to automatically reflect specific references in all scheduled payouts. You can use these in the description or referenceForBeneficiary fields of a managed or custom payout schedule, or can be set up for your entire balance platform by your Adyen contact.

To dynamically change the transfer descriptions, set any of the following placeholders in the description and/or referenceForBeneficiary fields:

Placeholder	Description	Example value in the statement
`$balanceAccountId`	The ID of the balance account.	BA00000000000000000000001
`$balanceAccountReference`	Your reference for the balance account.	BA reference
`$balanceAccountDescription`	Your description for the balance account.	BA description
`$accountHolderId`	The ID of the account holder.	AH00000000000000000000001
`$accountHolderReference`	Your reference of the account holder.	AH reference
`$accountHolderDescription`	Your description for the account holder.	Dean's Donuts
`$transferReference`	Managed payouts: The 15-character Adyen-generated reference for the resulting transfer. Custom scheduled payouts: The 30-character Adyen-generated reference for the resulting transfer.	SP0000000000001 SWPE12345678901234567890123456
`$shortTransferReference`	Only for custom scheduled payouts: The 15-character Adyen-generated reference for the resulting transfer.	S12345678901234

For example, setting the description to $accountHolderId and $accountHolderDescription when creating a payout schedule generates a transfer request with the description AH00000000000000000000001 and Dean's Donuts.

To automate the reconciliation of payouts, we recommend that you use the $shortTransferReference. This appears in the:

Customer Area under Transfer Details page under Description
Transfer confirmation letter under Description
Balance Platform Payout Report under Description
Beneficiary bank statements as remittance information. This is provided by all banks, but the location in the bank statement can differ.

If you set the description or referenceForBeneficiary for custom scheduled payouts both on the balance account and on the balance platform-level, the setting on balance account-level takes precedence. If you haven't configured a descriptor, the default value is EXT BAL SWEEP SWPE $[...]$.

On-demand payouts and Cashout

For manual transfers initiated by using the Transfer API, you must provide the descriptions as static strings within the API request. Placeholders are not supported for these on-demand requests.

Customization: You can populate the description and referenceForBeneficiary parameters directly in each /transfers and /cashouts request.
Reconciliation: Since these payouts are not automated based on a pre-configured schedule, we recommended that you include unique internal references in the description field to assist your users with reconciliation.

Transfer statement description character limits

The following limits apply to the length and the characters that you can use when setting a transfer statement description based on the location of the counterparty and the priority.

Character limits

The following tables show the character limits for each combination of currency and priority that Adyen supports.