ISO 20022

Unstructured address data is being removed. Are you ready?

After November 2026, only fully structured or hybrid postal addresses will be accepted. Swift guidance is available to help you understand the requirements and prepare your organisation ahead of the deadline.

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Unstructured address data is being removed. Are you ready?

A critical change you need to prepare for

Unstructured address data is being phased out in ISO 20022 payment messages. To be compliant, town name and country must be provided in unique tags at a minimum. This means that institutions relying on unstructured address data today will need to adapt their systems, data models and processes.

Failure to do so can lead to:

Payment delays
Increased rejections
Higher operational and compliance risks

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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)

From 14 November 2026, the fully unstructured messages may be rejected or delayed, in line with the deadline set by the payments community through the Payments Market Practice Group (PMPG).

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.

Why it matters now

Accurate, structured data for better identification

Moving away from free-text address fields ensures that payment data is consistent, standardised and fully machine-readable. This improves the ability to correctly identify parties across the payment chain.

Better compliance and reduced risk

Structured addresses significantly improve sanctions screening and AML controls. More precise data reduces false positives and helps institutions detect real risks more effectively.

Fewer delays, repairs and manual interventions

Unstructured address data often leads to payment exceptions and investigations. Structured data enables higher straight-through processing (STP) rates and reduces costly manual handling.

Improved customer experience

Cleaner, more reliable data means fewer payment delays and greater transparency. This translates into faster, smoother payments for end customers.

Foundation for automation and innovation across the industry

Standardised address data supports end-to-end automation and unlocks advanced capabilities such as analytics, fraud detection and new value-added services.

Get ready

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 customers understand what data they need to source and provide
- Help channel applications (across all channels), can capture and validate structured address information
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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.
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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.
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How address data should be structured

From November 2026, postal addresses in cross-border payment messages must be provided in one of two valid formats; fully structured or hybrid.

Structured postal address

A fully structured address must include the Country and Town Name elements a minimum. It cannot contain the Address Line element.

<Nm>JOHN SMITH</Nm>
<PstlAdr>
	<SrtNm> MARK LANE</StrNm>
	<BlgNb>55</BlgNb>
	<BlgNm>THE CORN EXCHANGE</BlgNm>
	<Flr>6</Flr>
	<PstCd>EC3R 7NE</PstCd>
	<TwnNm>LONDON<TwnNm>
	<Ctry>GB</Ctry>
</PstlAdr>

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.

<Nm>JOHN SMITH</Nm>
<PstlAdr>
	<TwnNm>LONDON</TwnNm>
	<Ctry>GB</Ctry>
	<AdrLine>55 MARK LANE, THE CORN EXCHANGE, 6TH FLOOR, EC3R 7NE </AdrLine>
</PstlAdr>

Where are we today?

^{Global adoption of hybrid and structured Postal Address - June 2026 - Scope: pacs.008 and CBPR+}

Debtor			Creditor
Fully structured or hybrid postal address	Unstructured postal address	No postal address	Fully structured or hybrid postal address	Unstructured postal address	No postal address
Debtor element with postal address supplied in either structured or hybrid format	Debtor element with unstructured Postal Address	Debtor element without postal address information	Creditor element with Postal Address supplied in either structured or hybrid format	Creditor element with unstructured Postal Address	Creditor element without Postal Address information
Structured: 23.5% Hybrid: 11.7%	Unstructured: 60.1%	No address: 4.7%	Structured: 18.5% Hybrid: 6.4%	Unstructured: 61.4%	No address: 13.8%
Unstructured = 60.1 %			Unstructured = 61.4 %

^Notes:
^{- Statistics are derived from the observations of xml elements used in CBPR+ traffic}
^{- Where Structured, Hybrid and Unstructured Postal Address are used, the statistics do not provide information on the completeness of information supplied beyond the mandatory data elements}