ISO 20022

ISO 20022 is the international standard for financial messages, issued by the the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

The introduction of ISO 20022

"The new standard will significantly increase the amount of data that will be able to accompany the payment instruction.

One of the main benefits will be an increase in the ability to automate the allocation of receipts to customer accounts – reducing the time consuming, expensive and error-prone need for manual intervention.

In addition, it will allow more information regarding ultimate beneficiaries which will support any requirements for enhanced anti-money laundering protocols."

Association of Corporate Treasurers - blog - April 2022.

ISO 20022 - coexistence from 2023 to 2025

"March 2023 marked the start of the migration to ISO 20022 (MX). Since then, financial institutions can start sending MX messages, independently of their correspondent’s preferred channel (MT or MX) thanks to interoperability measures such as in-flow translation and Transaction Manager...

November 2025 [is] the end of the MT/ISO 20022 cross-border coexistence period, emphasising that priority should be given to payment instruction messages to ensure operational continuity and ongoing interoperability.

This is because the use of ISO 20022 cross-border payment instructions is necessary to enable end-to-end interoperability between financial institutions (FIs) and between FIs and Payments Market Infrastructures (PMIs). For compliance reasons, it is important to ensure that data – particularly related to payment parties – is not lost or truncated along the end-to-end processing chain. This cannot be guaranteed if a transaction that originates in ISO 20022 is converted to the less rich MT standard as part of its cross-border journey."

Migration to ISO 20022 - Start of coexistence - End of coexistence - SWIFT.

See also

• Compliance
• Interoperability
• Financial institution (FI)
• ISO
• ISO currency codes
• MT
• MX
• Payments Market Practice Group (PMPG)
• Payment Markets Infrastructures (PMIs)
• Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT)

Other resources

• Association of Corporate Treasurers ISO 20022 hub
• Migration to ISO 20022 - Start of coexistence - End of coexistence - SWIFT
• ISO 20022 website