Swift provides ISO 20022 expertise as National Bank of Ukraine embraces common international standards
Swift has been selected to advise the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) to help transform the country’s payments infrastructure. An efficient payments system is crucial to the functioning of a modern economy, and this project is part of a wider development initiative that aims to modernise Ukraine’s financial infrastructure to improve the country’s competitiveness and integration with global markets.
Swift will work with the National Bank of Ukraine to provide the specifications and rulebook for the new high value payment system, which will be based on the international ISO 20022 standard. Swift was one of the principal originators of the ISO 20022 standard and contributed the key payments specifications used by market infrastructures and schemes worldwide. Swift has played an important role in many prominent ISO 20022 implementations, including SEPA and TARGET2-Securities in Europe. Swift works with major payment system operators including the US Fed and CHIPS, The Bank of England, the Eurosystem and EBA Clearing to ensure a globally harmonised implementation of the standard for payments, and its own cross-border business will migrate to ISO 20022 from 2021. As such Swift is the ideal partner for the National Bank of Ukraine to ensure that its new system is aligned with those of major economies worldwide and compatible with cross-border standards to ensure end-to-end integrity, speed and efficiency of payments processing.
By moving to ISO 20022 for high-value payments, the National Bank of Ukraine is aligned with a global trend for payment system operators that promises easier interoperability between international and domestic payments, leading to higher service levels and improved efficiency for all stakeholders.
