ISO 20022 in bytes for payments: The journey continues
The migration to CBPR+ ISO 20022 for payment instructions is behind us – November 2025 was a huge milestone, and we saw a very successful end of coexistence where the community achieved a massive 97% adoption rate after the big weekend. However, the story doesn’t end there, there is still a way to go with the rest of the CBPR+ roadmap.
ISO 20022 in bytes for payments: The journey continues
Removal of Unstructured Addresses
In November 2025 the hybrid postal address option was introduced in the SR 2025 Usage Guidelines allowing a 1-year grace period to transition from unstructured postal addresses to structured or hybrid format.
After November 2026, only fully structured or hybrid postal addresses will be accepted. The usage guidelines for CBPR+ will enforce these rules across the network and Customers may see their payments rejected or delayed by their PSPs if the rules are not adhered to.
This change has significant implications for financial institutions, corporates and market infrastructures. 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.
The final Standards Release 2026 Usage Guidelines which includes the formal validation to retire unstructured addresses has been available since 20th February 2026.
Call to action for the community
Early readiness is strongly encouraged to ensure uninterrupted payment processing ahead of after the November 2026 cut‑over
- Central banks and banking associations must create awareness for their member FIs.
- Financial institutions must quickly engage with customers.
- Corporates customers must engage with their PSPs and counterparts to ensure they understand what information needs to be provided.
Data Quality Analytics
Swift’s Data Quality Analytics helps you monitor, analyse and enhance the quality of your ISO 20022 messages, giving you full insight into where data can be improved for operational efficiency and compliance excellence. New insights have been introduced to deliver enhanced visibility into the address structure of your messages. They provide the intelligence you need to track and optimise the use of structured and hybrid addresses, helping you stay informed and prepared ahead of the November 2026 deadline.
3-year plan for Exceptions & Investigations
The November 2026 requirements for the E&I Transformation Plan to Case Management and ISO 20022 Standards have now changed.
Based on community feedback, Swift is postponing the mandate to exchange all payment cancellation messages via the Stop and Recall Process (SRP) to November 2027. As a result, all payment cancellation messages can continue to be exchanged bilaterally in both MT and ISO 20022 formats until November 2027. Stop and Recall will continue to be available to Case Management and GPI participants.
In November 2026, the only requirement as part of the E&I Transformation Plan is to receive the camt.110 investigation request message with inflow translation (embedded MT 199).
The November 2027 requirements remain the same. All Financial Institutions will still be required to exchange payment cancellation messages via the Stop and Recall Process for all underlying transaction types in ISO 20022 format (camt.056/029). The use of Case Orchestrator for all investigation requests and responses (camt.110/camt.111) remains mandatory.
The scheduled End-of-Life of MT messages remains the same – November 2027. Formatted MT n95 / MT n96 (E&I) and MT n92 / MT n96 (payment cancellations) will be removed from the network (NAK). Unstructured MT n99 will be retired for E&I purposes.
We recently held a webinar in which we explained full details of the change and how to prepare for November 2026. You can review the presentation deck and recording here.
You can review full, updated details of the Transformation Plan in this KB article.
MT 101 interbank ‘relay’ migration to pain.001
As a reminder, November 2026 is the end of coexistence for MT 101, which means:
- MT 101 (multiple) is End of Life - NAK
- MT 101 (single) will be subject to contingency processing (automatic bootstrap applied, MT 101 to pain.001 conversion subject to additional FIN validation, fees will apply)
The new Implementation Guide developed to support institutions with the MT 101 interbank ‘relay’ migration to pain.001. This Implementation Guide has been developed by Swift in collaboration with the community to support the community with the transition of MT 101 to pain.001.
Organisations must determine their approach to ensure a business framework is in place, for most FIs accession to the Rulebook is their default approach. Ensure you accede to the pain.001 Rulebook and declare your BIC(s) readiness dates and roles they support.
The ISO 20022 Payments Initiation Relay Rulebook Directory lists your peers who have already acceded.
Since November 2025 In-flow translation supports pain.001 interbank to MT 101. The additional validation rules for the chargeable conversion service from November 2026 are available here and covers MT 101 single instruction.
Mandatory to receive Admi.024
MT 199s and MT 299s related to other use cases will migrate to the new ISO 20022 'correspondence message'.
- Since November 2025 usage guidelines for admi.024 have been available for use with bilateral agreements (manual RMA process). In-flow translation was also activated to support admi.024.
- From November 2026 there is an obligation to receive admi.024 and this will be supported by an automatic RMA bootstrap in to enforce the mandatory to receive status.
- In that context too, MT 199s and MT 299s target retirement dates are under review.