Interbank, Correspondent, and International Banking

Interbank, correspondent, and international banking terms describe relationships between banks that support funding, cross-border payments, foreign branches, offshore deposits, and account services. This branch covers correspondent banks, respondent banks, loro and vostro accounts, interbank lending, interbank deposits, foreign branches, international banking, offshore banking, and Eurobanking.

Use these pages when the bank-to-bank relationship changes settlement path, funding exposure, account ownership, jurisdiction, sanctions review, liquidity, or correspondent-bank responsibility.

What This Branch Covers

Decision Lens

Start with which bank holds the account and which bank is exposed. The same cross-border payment can involve customer banks, correspondents, intermediaries, foreign branches, settlement accounts, and regulatory jurisdictions.

Evaluation Checklist

• Identify the sending bank, receiving bank, correspondent, respondent, account owner, currency, jurisdiction, value date, and settlement route.
• Separate customer account records, correspondent accounts, interbank loans, interbank deposits, foreign-branch activity, and offshore or Eurobanking context.
• Check payment messages, correspondent agreements, account confirmations, nostro-vostro records, interbank confirmations, rate quotes, and sanctions or compliance records.
• Review whether the relationship changes settlement timing, credit exposure, funding cost, liquidity, country risk, or operational control.
• Treat legal, regulatory, sanctions, tax, and cross-border compliance conclusions as professional-advice areas.

Common Mistakes

• Confusing correspondent banks with customer-facing receiving banks.
• Treating interbank lending as the same as customer deposits.
• Ignoring value dates, intermediary fees, sanctions checks, and account currency.
• Reviewing cross-border bank exposure without the correspondent agreement and payment message trail.

In this section

Choose a subsection first. Deeper term pages live inside each subsection, which keeps large topic hubs readable.