The invention provides a process for amidating a desired peptide comprising cleaving a substrate polypeptide at a X.sub.1-cysteine sequence, wherein X1 is the amino acid at the peptide carboxyl-terminus and cysteine is the first amino acid of a palladium cleavage site comprising the sequence cysteine-X2-X3, wherein X2 is any amino acid, X3 is an amino acid selected from the group consisting of cysteine, histidine, or methionine, and wherein the carboxylterminus of the peptide is amidated upon cleavage at the X1-cysteine sequence.