How to Send SEPA Payments to ING: Field Requirements and Common Rejections | SEPA & ISO 20022 Knowledge Hub

Scope: this guide covers the ING credit-transfer profile implemented in the converter and validator. It does not claim an ING-specific pain.008 rule set: no such profile is encoded here.

ING rejects many files before transaction-level processing because a value is in the wrong character set or a payment-method field does not match the bank profile. The practical fix is to prepare a clean Excel source and generate the XML from the ING profile rather than editing tags after export.

What the implemented ING profile writes and checks

Area	ING profile behavior
Credit-transfer schema	`pain.001.001.03`
Payment method	`<PmtMtd>TRF</PmtMtd>`; rule `ING_004` fails any other value.
Batch booking	Enabled by default.
Beneficiary IBAN	Rule `ING_001` requires two letters, two digits, then 1-30 uppercase alphanumeric characters.
Names and remittance	Rules `ING_002` and `ING_003` restrict `Nm` and `Ustrd` to the Latin-1 range while the XML declaration remains UTF-8.
Address lines	The profile limits unstructured address output to two lines.

Common rejections and the direct fix

ING_001: Invalid IBAN format. Remove spaces before export and make sure the source holds an uppercase IBAN-shaped value. This rule is a format gate; it is not a substitute for an IBAN checksum check.
ING_002 or ING_003 character-set failure. Names and unstructured remittance containing emoji, CJK characters, or letters outside Latin-1 are likely to be rejected. Replace or transliterate them in the spreadsheet; do not paste a visual look-alike into XML.
ING_004: Payment Method fixed to TRF. Generate a credit-transfer file with the ING profile instead of changing a direct-debit or cheque-oriented template by hand.
Address output exceeds the profile shape. Keep an unstructured address concise enough for two lines, or map street, postcode, city, and country separately so the generator can create structured address elements.

The XML shape to inspect

<PmtInf>
  <PmtMtd>TRF</PmtMtd>
  <BtchBookg>true</BtchBookg>
  <PmtTpInf><SvcLvl><Cd>SEPA</Cd></SvcLvl></PmtTpInf>
</PmtInf>

Prepare Excel without creating a repair queue

Keep recipient IBAN, recipient name, amount, and remittance in separate columns. Do not combine account data into the name or reference.
Clean names and remittance to the supported character range before upload. The ING generator sanitizes text outside that range rather than leaving invalid characters in the output.
Map address parts to their own columns where available. This avoids relying on a long free-text address that must be split into two lines.
Select ING when generating. The converter applies the pain.001.001.03 namespace, default batch booking, TRF, and profile validation automatically.

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What the implemented ING profile writes and checks

Common rejections and the direct fix

The XML shape to inspect

Prepare Excel without creating a repair queue

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