Table of contents
What is contingency processing for MT senders?
The coexistence period for the migration to ISO 20022 of cross-border FI-to-FI (Financial institution, either Supervised or Non-supervised) payment instructions ended on 22 November 2025.
MT payment instructions are no longer supported by the FIN service for FI-to-FI cross-border flows.
Swift has built selective and chargeable short term contingency measures to ensure business continuity for the community and a smooth exit from the coexistence period.
For the messages in scope, the contingency processing for MT senders consists of two steps:
- 1. FIN network validation, including additional rules ensuring that the MT payment instruction message can be fully and accurately converted to its ISO 20022 equivalent. Messages that fail validation are NAK’ed, and no further processing is performed. The sending party needs to be operationally ready to support these additional NAKs and operational processes to manage such exceptions.
2. MT messages that pass network validation are converted at a cost to their ISO 20022 equivalent (or in rare circumstances aborted) and delivered to the receiver in ISO 20022 format via the FINplus service.
Details of the additional MT validation rules referred to in point 1 are published in the FIN - Contingency Processing for Category 1 and 2 Payment Instruction Messages - Addendum to FIN Service Description and FINPlus Service Description.
What is the difference between contingency processing for MT senders, the in-flow translation service, local translations with Swift Translator and Transaction Manager?
Swift has built selective and chargeable short term contingency measures to ensure business continuity for the community and a smooth exit from the coexistence period.
Since 22 November 2025, the contingency processing for MT senders provides a limited conversion to ISO 20022 of critical MT instructions, ensuring receivers only receive ISO 20022.
The in-flow translation service is available on the FINplus service and creates an MT representation derived from the ISO 20022 message (ISO 20022-to-MT translation). The translation operation takes place during the message exchange at Swift and is based on the preferences configured by the receiver. Read our dedicated FAQs category for more information.
Swift Translator is a messaging format translation solution which enables customers to define, validate, and translate messages from and to any messaging format. As the Swift Translator solution is network and interface-independent, it can be deployed locally and integrated in a flexible manner (MT-to-ISO 20022 and/or ISO 20022-to-MT translation).
Transaction Manager maintains full transaction data centrally at Swift and ensures that for in-scope data elements no data is lost, corrupted, or over-written during the transaction life cycle through the application of business validations and data integrity rules which were defined by the community. By safeguarding in-scope payment details along the transaction chain, Transaction Manager aims to improve end-to-end business transaction integrity and transparency. Messages converted by the contingency processing for MT senders and subsequent ISO 20022 legs, are not processed by Transaction Manager.
What are the messages in scope of contingency processing for MT senders?
Payment instruction message types MT 103, MT 103 STP, MT 200, MT 202, MT 202 COV, MT 205, MT 205 COV, sent FI-to-FI since 22 November 2025 are automatically subject to contingency processing.
The following FIN MT payment instruction message types sent FI-to-FI will be removed from the network, immediately Negatively Acknowledged (NAK’ed) and will not be delivered: MT 102, MT 102 STP, MT 103 REMIT, MT 201, MT 203.
How long will contingency processing for MT senders be provided for?
The goal of the contingency MT to ISO 20022 conversion processing is to ensure business continuity for the community and a smooth exit from the coexistence period.
These measures are not intended as a long-term or complete solution for MT users, nor do they constitute an alternative to ISO 20022 adoption. Community conversion to the new standard priorityis still essential. A roadmap of contingency processing will be disclosed in the course of Q2 2026.
Can I just rely on contingency processing for MT senders as my solution to ISO 20022 readiness?
The goal of the contingency measures are to ensure business continuity for the community and a smooth exit from the coexistence period, not to provide a long-term alternative to native adoption of ISO 20022.
The contingency measures come with operational, transparency, business and financial disincentives, to avoid wide and long-term use.
Operational
- Additional FIN network validation
- Even with FIN validation passed, messages could still be aborted if not translatable.
- Users need to continuously re-invest into their FIN messaging capabilities as ISO 20022 standards and usage guidelines evolve.
Transparency
Messages converted from MT to ISO 20022 bear a flag allowing recipients to identify that received messages have been converted by Swift. This allows counterparts still sending FIN MT messages to be identified.
Business
Converted messages do not contain structured and rich data. Users relying on conversion miss the added value offered by the ISO 20022 syntax and may struggle to meet future regulatory or market requirements, particularly given the continuing evolution of the ISO 20022 standard, which will not be made backward compatible with MT. In addition, converted messages are not processed by Transaction Manager and do not benefit from extra business validation rules.
Financial
Both contingency processing for MT senders and in-flow translation for payment instruction messages received are chargeable from 1 January 2026.
What is the cost of contingency processing for MT senders?
To incentivise customers to complete their ISO 20022 migration and discourage long-term dependency on contingency processing for MT senders, charges are automatically applied from 1 January 2026 based on the volume of converted MTs. These charges are not included in the Fixed fee or in Swift Essentials.
Swift may decide to increase these charges in the future with prior notice, to ensure continued momentum to complete the migration. Such review will be subject to Swift’s standard governance rules as well as the usual customer notification timelines.
Do I need to opt-in for contingency processing for MT senders?
Messages in scope of contingency processing are automatically checked against the additional FIN validation rules and converted to ISO 20022 since 22 November 2025. BICs are automatically enrolled upon sending qualifying MTs, and are charged as of 1 January 2026.
There is no opt-in or opt-out process for MT senders so no orders or e-forms are required. To avoid conversion and its associated charges, do not send MT messages in scope of contingency processing.
