A payment file or a ‘batch payment file’ is a document that specifies the details of each of the individual payments in a payment batch. A payment file contains all the information necessary to process a money transfer: the payer and beneficiaries’ account numbers, the amounts, pay-in and pay-out currencies, payment reference and other relevant comments. Companies with significant invoice processing activity tend to bundle payments to process them in batches in order to save time. The resulting payment file includes the details of all the invoices in the batch and is used by the bank or electronic payment provider to process all the transactions.