ISO 20022: The removal of unstructured address

Why unstructured addresses are being removed?

The removal of unstructured addresses will improve data quality in cross-border payments. Structured address data allows for greater straight-through processing, more effective compliance screening and enhanced transparency across the payments chain.  

This directly supports the G20 goal of improving data quality and transparency in cross-border payments and the CPMI harmonisation requirements. It also supports future data requirements, e.g. FATF Recommendation 16: Improved payment transparency and screening/monitoring of required debtor and creditor information. 

As ISO 20022 adoption matures, the use of rich and structured data is essential to realise the full benefits of the new global standard. Unstructured addresses are increasingly a barrier to automation and operational efficiency, which is why their removal has been prioritised by our community.

Who does this change impact? 

This change has significant implications for financial institutions, corporates and market infrastructures. This requirement applies to all payments, including corporate, securities, trade, FX and funds.

What is required for November 2026?

From 14 November 2026, town and country information must be provided in designated fields, at a minimum, for all agents and parties in CBPR+ payment messages, except for ISO 20022 message identifiers admi.024, camt.025, camt.052, camt.053, camt.054 and camt.060. For agents, use of the BIC only continues to be a valid option rather than providing name and address. 

This requirement applies to all payments, including corporate, securities, trade, FX and funds.

After November 2026, payments containing unstructured addresses will no longer be supported. This may result in operational disruption for banks and their customers if preparations are not completed in time. 

What will happen after 14 November 2026 if institutions are not ready?

Messaging interfaces that apply schemas validation will reject invalid payments instructions before they are submitted to the network.

Payments containing unstructured addresses will be NAK’ed at network level under CBPR+ from 14 November 2026 onwards. 

The final Standards Release 2026 Usage Guidelines which includes the formal validation to retire unstructured addresses has been available since 20 February 2026 here Usage Guidelines - CBPRPlus SR2026 (Combined)

As address information must be sourced at origin, it is not possible for Swift to develop a contingency solution for financial institutions who experience delays in readiness. Therefore, the November deadline must be adhered to. 

What are CBPR+ and HVPS+ and why is interoperability between them important?

Cross-Border Payments & Reporting (CBPR+) have created global market practices to ensure a common roll-out and implementation of ISO 20022 by banks for cross-border payments and cash reporting.

High Value Payments Systems have created guidelines on the usage of ISO 20022 for high value payments systems, to be used by domestic communities as a basis in the development of their own, specific market practice.

40% of cross-border transactions have at least one ISO 20022 domestic leg, typically at the beginning and/or at the end and 10-50% of RTGS payments have at least one ISO 20022 cross-border leg. All payment or clearing systems in the payment chain play a key role in ensuring data can travel from one agent / Payment Service Provider (PSP) to the next. If there are inconsistencies in standards, there is a risk of inefficient processing of payments due to interoperability and fragmentation issues.

Where are PMIs with their plans? 

Payment market infrastructures play a critical role in ensuring the information can travel efficiently and with integrity across a payment chain.

PMIs for the largest tradeable currencies such as USD, EUR, GBP, AUD, CAD, SGD and many others are aligned with this change for the same November 2026 deadline. 

Approximately 65 MIs do not yet have plans to align timelines to process hybrid/structured addresses from November 2026, creating interoperability and equity risks. These market infrastructures processing cross-border payment that don’t yet have plans to align with this change and users participating in these PMIs should be aware of of potential interoperability challenges as well as define processes to act upon such cases. PMIs operating legacy FIN format or older versions of ISO 20022 usage guidelines need to consider upgrading to avoid operational overhead for their participants and ensure payment transparency.

What is the problem if PMIs have not aligned to this change?

A transaction that starts with a PMI that allows unstructured addresses which then goes cross-border will fail when CBPR+ applies strong validation (unstructured addresses removed). As a result of the payment not adhering to these formats, customers may see their requests be rejected or delayed by their PSPs, potentially impacting processing timelines and increasing operational overhead.

This will cause the following market readiness risks:

• Friction between CBPR+ and domestic market infrastructures, reversing progress on the G20 targets.
• Interoperability issues, disproportionately affecting smaller banks and emerging‑region markets.
• Potential for financial‑inclusion impacts in markets with slower ISO 20022 adoption.

Current adoption levels  

Despite strong progress across the community, adoption remains uneven. Today, approximately 65% of payment messages still contain unstructured addresses.

What this means for our FI community 

End‑to‑end readiness now depends on the ability of banks to capture accurate, structured address data from clients (creditor) across all channels, branches, and onboarding processes as well as their ability to structure debtor information. This requirement applies to all payments, including corporate, securities, trade, FX and funds.

We encourage institutions not to treat this as a typical standards release. Ensure thorough analysis, development, testing and client engagement early on to decrease operational risk. 

Organisations should take specific actions to get ready: 

• Engage with channel teams to understand how creditor postal address data is captured from retail and corporate clients 
• Meet with corporate clients to clarify what is required to provide fully structured or hybrid addresses 
• Align across operations and technology teams on how debtor address data is populated 
• Review how agent data is populated, particularly where name and address data is used instead of a BIC 
• Assess interoperability challenges, where payment market infrastructure timelines are not fully aligned with CBPR+ 
• Evaluate current capabilities to output structured or hybrid postal addresses and the effort required to close any gaps 
• Take measures to prevent clients from submitting unstructured address data going forward 

What corporates should do now? 

Corporates must source address information on the Creditor through their own channels, store it in their ERP / treasury application, and then provide it to the bank at payment initiation with at minimum town name and Country. This requirement applies regardless of the channel used, whether using MT101 SCORE, pain.001 SCORE+ or banks' proprietary channels, as the bank will require that information to execute the payment. For the beneficiary bank, if a BIC is used as the identifier, then no bank postal address is required.