A financial institution that receives funds from a wire transfer transmitter’s financial institution and relays or transmits the order of payment to the recipient’s financial institution. In an international funds transmission, these institutions are often located in different countries. The originating and beneficiary institutions do not have a direct relationship and need to “relay” the wire transfer through an institution or institutions that have relationships with the previous bank. For example, a customer at Bank A in the United States may want to send funds to a customer at Bank X in Germany. If banks A and X have no direct relationship, Bank A might first route the wire through Bank B in the United States, which in turn has a relationship with Bank Y in Germany, which then routes it to the beneficiary Bank, Bank X. In this case, Bank A is the originating bank, Banks B and Y are intermediary banks, and Bank X is the beneficiary bank. In several large sanctions cases, intermediary banks were used to hide the involvement of sanctioned entities or persons in the payment chain.

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