ISO 20022: A new era for global payments

A shared industry achievement 

This milestone reflects years of coordinated work across financial institutions (FIs), payments market infrastructures (PMIs) and the wider Swift community. In 2018, recognising the close links between cross-border and domestic payments, and with ISO 20022 already being adopted for the latter, the community decided to make ISO 20022 the standard for cross-border payments.  

After a period of coexistence with the MT format that began in March 2023, ISO 20022 is now required for payment instructions – creating opportunities for increased efficiency, innovation, and customer insights for institutions and market infrastructures worldwide. A conversion service is in place to automatically convert remaining MT instructions to the ISO 20022 format for a period to ensure the smooth flow of global payments. 

“This has been a huge achievement for the global industry, and a collective effort in upgrading the global payments experience. ISO 20022’s rich, structured data is foundational to the future of payments – and a cornerstone of Swift’s strategy to enable an instant, frictionless, interoperable, and inclusive future. This switch will both enhance risk and control capabilities to better support compliance requirements and lay the foundations for the next generation of payments”, said Jerome Piens, Chief Operations Officer at Swift.

Driving a smarter, faster payments experience 

ISO 20022 is a key enabler towards an enhanced cross-border payments experience, in line with G20 goals, and its flexible and extensible format provides a strong foundation for digital transformation and integration of tokenised forms of value. As Swift and its community continue to collaborate, it is key to our work in shaping the future of finance, together.

Endorsed by the G20 and the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI), ISO 20022 is central to faster, more efficient and data-driven payments.  

By enabling richer, structured data within transactions, it helps financial institutions:

• Boost operational efficiency and straight-through processing rates 
• Improve analytics, compliance and customer insight 
• Drive innovation and enhanced end-user experiences
   

ISO 20022 is a key enabler towards an enhanced cross-border payments experience, in line with G20 goals, and its flexible and extensible format provides a strong foundation for digital transformation and integration of tokenised forms of value. As Swift and its community continue to collaborate, it is key to our work in shaping the future of finance, together. 

Jerome Piens added: “The new standard will power our strategic initiative to create a payment scheme to guarantee a consistently fast, predictable and transparent experience for retail customers worldwide, and will also enable the foundations for our blockchain-based shared ledger, to allow the trusted movement of tokenised value, thereby bringing together TradFi and DeFi for a fully interoperable financial ecosystem of the future.

Unlocking the full value of ISO 20022

Swift continues to support the community with a focus on business continuity to ensure a smooth exit from coexistence. With the community reaching this point, the focus can also now shift from format readiness to realising the value of structured data. Swift is providing guidance, tools, and analytics to help institutions measure, optimise and innovate using ISO 20022 data. 

We’re also working closely with:

• Domestic markets, as PMIs continue their migration journeys;
• Financial institutions and corporates, to ensure rich, high-quality data is captured at source and flows seamlessly across payment chains.