Sending money to Mozambique: the thirty-day clock that starts when it arrives

A transfer to Mozambique can arrive at the bank and still not be in anyone's account. Article 10 of the Banco de Moçambique's exchange-operations Aviso gives the bank one business day to tell the beneficiary the money is there, gives the beneficiary thirty days to produce the supporting documents, and then allows the bank to send the money back.

Key Takeaways

• Aviso n.º 3/GBM/2024 was published in the Boletim da República of 20 March 2024 and took effect thirty days later.
• Article 10(2)(a) requires the bank to notify the client within one business day of receiving the transfer message and its confirmation of cover.
• The beneficiary then has thirty days to send the supporting documents for the operation.
• Once those thirty days end, the intermediary bank or payment service provider may return the funds. The Aviso permits a return; it does not order one.
• With the documents presented, article 10(2)(b) gives the bank two business days to credit the account.

What Mozambique requires before an arriving transfer is credited

Documents, and a sequence with three deadlines in it.

Aviso n.º 3/GBM/2024 establishes the norms and procedures for carrying out exchange operations. It was signed by the Governor of the Banco de Moçambique in Maputo on 2 February 2024, and published in the Boletim da República, I Série, Número 57, of 20 March 2024. It enters into force thirty days after publication.

Its article 10 is headed "Pagamento e recebimento sobre o exterior", payment and receipt in relation to abroad. What it governs is a bank or payment service provider crediting a conta do cliente, the client's account, so it describes an account credit rather than every way money can reach somebody in Mozambique. Its first paragraph says such payments and receipts are to be made by bank transfer, by payment account or by other legally permitted means. Its second paragraph is the one that decides what happens to an arriving transfer, and it puts three obligations on the receiving institution and one on the person receiving the money.

Read as a sequence, that is a transfer which lands, is announced, and waits. Documents presented inside the thirty days start the two-day credit. Documents not presented leave the institution free to return the funds, and free not to.

What happens when the thirty days run out

The bank is allowed to return the money. It is not required to.

The wording matters, because the difference decides whether the money comes back on its own or does not. The Aviso says that at the end of the thirty days the intermediary bank or the payment service provider may carry out the return of the funds. It is a permission, not an instruction.

Two things follow from that. The first is that nothing in article 10 guarantees an automatic return on day thirty-one, so the deadline is not a refund date. The second is that the Aviso sets no period within which a return must happen once it is allowed, which is a gap the instrument simply does not address.

What the Aviso does address is the record. Article 10(2)(c) requires the institution to report to the Banco de Moçambique whenever the periods in the preceding subparagraphs have not been met, and to state the reasons. That reaches all three: the notification, the thirty days and the crediting period. That duty runs to the central bank, not to the customer, so a missed deadline generates a report rather than a notice to either end of the transfer.

What the supporting documents are for family money

Two items, and one of them is about the sender rather than the recipient.

Article 58 lists the transfers the Aviso treats as unilateral, in both directions. They are cash donations, maintenance payments, social-security and pension-fund pensions, the remittance of amounts for expenses or family help, sums relating to inheritances and legacies, sums for the taxes on those, and other current obligations. Ordinary family support sent from Australia falls inside that list.

Article 59 then sets the documents. Its first paragraph is a five-item list for a transfer going out of Mozambique. Its second paragraph is the inbound rule, and it is short: where the unilateral transfer is made from abroad, the bank must require the elements in subparagraphs (a) and (b) of the preceding paragraph.

Those two are the identification of the person requesting the transfer, and an indication of the relationship between that person and the beneficiary.

So on an Australia to Mozambique remittance, the two things a Mozambican bank must demand are who sent it and how the two people are related. The recipient is the one on the thirty-day clock, and the sender is the one holding one of the two answers.

What the statute above the Aviso says about arriving money

Four provisions of the Lei Cambial itself, sitting above the Aviso article the rest of this guide turns on.

The Aviso is made under Lei n.º 28/2022 de 29 de Dezembro, the Lei Cambial. It was published in the Boletim da República of 29 December 2022 and replaced the 2009 law of the same name. Its article 8 states that the Banco de Moçambique is the exchange authority of the Republic. That is what makes an Aviso the operative instrument on a question like this one.

Its article 22 carries the same heading as the Aviso article above, payment and receipt in relation to abroad, and adds two rules the Aviso does not repeat.

The first is about the currency the money arrives in. Receipt from abroad must occur exclusively in foreign currency, save in the situations established or authorised by the Banco de Moçambique. The second is about how the obligation may be settled: the mechanism of set-off or compensation is prohibited on a receipt from abroad and on the repatriation of receipts. Money owed from outside the country has to actually arrive, in foreign currency, rather than be netted against something else.

Article 21 adds the domestic counterpart, which is the reason the metical turns up at the end of the chain: payments and receipts in foreign currency between residents, inside the national territory, are prohibited.

The Banco de Moçambique's own Licensing and Exchange Control page still describes the framework as the 2009 Lei Cambial operationalised by Aviso n.º 20/2017. Both have been replaced, the second by the 2024 Aviso's own revocation article. The page remains useful for its definition of what counts as an exchange operation and for its summary of the duties, which include the bank's duties of verification, information and registration.

Why a purpose is being asked about at all

Because the register the transaction goes into has a field for it.

Article 7 requires the exchange registration to be made electronically and in real time. It must collect all the information about the operation: the parties, the nature of the operation, the amount, the purpose, and an assessment of its legitimacy. Supporting documents are what turn each of those into something a bank can record.

That is a reporting architecture rather than a permission regime, and it explains the shape of article 10. The money is not being assessed for approval while it waits. It is waiting for the record to be completed.

Where to look next

What a payment rail is made of covers the separate layers a cross-border payment depends on, and how a restriction removes one of them at a time. How international transfers work sets out the ordinary sequence a payment moves through and the points at which it can be held. For the live figures, see the Australian dollar to Mozambican metical page, or the Australian dollar to metical convert page.

Sources

• Aviso n.º 3/GBM/2024, Banco de Moçambique, Boletim da República I Série Número 57, 20 March 2024 - article 10 on payment and receipt in relation to abroad, including the one-business-day notification, the thirty days for supporting documents, the permissive return of funds, the two-business-day crediting period and the duty to report a missed period to the Banco de Moçambique with reasons; article 58 listing unilateral operations; article 59(2) requiring identification of the requester and the relationship to the beneficiary on an inbound unilateral transfer; article 7 on the real-time electronic exchange registration and the fields it collects; and the entry-into-force and revocation articles. Served through Mozambique's Janela Unica Electronica portal; the file is the gazette itself and carries its masthead, issue number and date
• Lei n.º 28/2022 de 29 de Dezembro, Lei Cambial, Boletim da República I Série Número 251, 2.º Suplemento, 29 December 2022 - served from a commercial bank's server rather than a government one; the file is the gazette itself and carries its masthead, issue number and date. Article 8 naming the Banco de Moçambique as the exchange authority; article 21(2) prohibiting payments and receipts in foreign currency between residents in national territory; article 22(2) requiring receipt from abroad to occur exclusively in foreign currency save where the Bank establishes or authorises otherwise, and article 22(3) prohibiting set-off or compensation on a receipt from abroad and on the repatriation of receipts. This is a reproduction of the gazette carrying its masthead, issue number and date
• Banco de Moçambique, Licenciamento e Controlo Cambial - the Bank's own definition of what counts as an exchange operation, and its summary of the duties the exchange legislation imposes on persons and on banks, including the duties of verification, information and registration. The page still names the superseded 2009 Lei Cambial and Aviso n.º 20/2017 as the framework

General information about sending money to Mozambique and about the exchange rules that apply when it arrives. Not financial advice, and not a recommendation of any product or institution. Reviewed by the Tradergy editorial team, September 2026.