Removal of unstructured address
After November 2026, only fully structured or hybrid postal addresses will be accepted.
Removal of unstructured address
The usage guidelines for CBPR+ will enforce these rules across the network. Customers submitting payments not adhering to these formats may see their requests be rejected or delayed by their PSPs, potentially impacting processing timelines and increasing operational overhead.
Until November 2026, there are three valid formats for providing postal addresses in cross-border payment messages:
- Fully structured (already available and strongly recommended)
- Hybrid (already available)
- Fully unstructured (to be decommissioned by November 2026)
This change is a community‑driven standards evolution, endorsed through the formal maintenance process and country vote, and directly supports the G20 objective of improving data quality and transparency in cross‑border payments. It supports future data requirements e.g. FATF rec. 16: Improved payment transparency and screening / monitoring of required debtor and creditor information.
This planned 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.
Structured postal address
A fully structured address must include the Country and Town Name elements a minimum. It cannot contain the Address Line element.
Hybrid postal address
A hybrid postal address must include the Country and Town Name elements, it will also allow the Address Line element to be included. 2 occurrences of the Address Line element with up to 70 characters are permitted. Other structured elements in addition to Country and Town Name may also be included e.g. Post Code.
Impact per markets
Financial Institutions
Changes required to remove unstructured addresses are far reaching, as they have downstream impacts beyond internal systems.
Financial institutions need to coordinate with business, operations and technology teams, and engage clients early to understand the impacts on their customers and counterparties, including the need to:
- Structure existing customer address data
- Ensure channel applications (across all channels), can capture and validate structured address information
- Ensure customers understand what data they need to source and provide
Market Infrastructures
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.
Market infrastructures processing cross-border payment that don’t yet have plans to align with this change need to consider uplifting their usage guidelines to avoid operational overhead for their participants and ensure payment transparency.
Corporate customer communities
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.
Call to action for the community
Early readiness is strongly encouraged to ensure uninterrupted payment processing ahead of after the November 2026 cut‑over
- Calling upon Central banks, banking associations to create awareness for their member FIs.
- Calling upon all banks to engage with customers.
- Calling upon corporates customers to engage with their PSPs and counterparts to ensure they understand what information needs to be provided.
Frequently Asked Questions
We have compiled a list of questions frequently asked about ISO 20022 and the removal of unstructured address.