The global standard for payments messaging

ISO 20022 is an established global standard for payments messaging.  It creates a common language and model for payments data across the globe, which provides higher quality payment information than other standards as well as adapting to new needs and approaches.

The main benefit of adopting ISO 20022 XML is a better payments experience as it reduces multiple payment scheme and bank in-house formats to a single industry-wide standard. 

The industry timeline for the ISO 20022 migration are:

CHAPS – from June 2023

Target2 – from March 2023

CBPR+ – from March 2023

Big-bang refers to an approach that requires participants to implement the new messaging standard immediately, replacing the old without any coexistence, at the go-live date, e.g. Eurosystem/T2

Phased migration is a migration phase to ensure smooth transition to a new format, allowing the use of both the new and the existing messaging standard for a limited period of time. This means that participants are allowed to implement a new format on a voluntary basis during this period.

To better understand how to translate data to the ISO 20022 Standard, you can find out more about mapping MT to MX, ISO20022 and XML schema by visiting SWIFT

For Faster Payments sent via SWIFTNet FIN, the MT format will eventually migrate to MX and will be detailed in future comms

Faster Payments are in scope of Pay.UK NPA migration to ISO20022 but dates are not known at the moment. 

Business, Commercial and Corporate customers that make/receive Sterling, Euro and cross border payments will be impacted along with Financial Institutions, Indirect Scheme Participants, Partner Banks, SWIFT Correspondent and SWIFT Corporate customers.

For customers whose internal back end systems link to NatWest Group systems or they submit traffic on a direct basis, changes will need to be made to ensure ISO 20022 formatted messages can be sent/received and processed correctly.

Banks and other payment service providers participating in Market Infrastructures must get ready to support ISO 20022 payment and account information messages throughout the end-to-end value chain.

To meet this challenge, most banks will have to be ready to support ISO 20022 for HVPS+ applicable to the respective Market Infrastructure. This requires banks to assess and decide on their clearing connectivity options and potentially adjust the business processes used in payments.

Banks involved in cross-border payments need to get ready to support ISO 20022 payment and account information messages throughout the end-to-end value chain. To meet this challenge, most banks will have to be ready to support ISO 20022 for CBPR+ although there is a co-existence period up until November 2025. This requires banks to assess and adjust the business processes used in payments.

It is likely that you will need to enhance your enterprises resource planning (ERP) or treasury management system (TMS).

Corporates are advised to:

• Check whether adjustments to the ERP/ TMS system are necessary, e.g. to support richer ISO 20022 payment information in the account statement and (auto-) reconciliation
• Prepare for providing structured name/address information of beneficiaries
• Switch to the newest Payment Initiation (pain.) version and Cash Management (camt.) message format early, if necessary
• Analyze whether a complete changeover to the ISO 20022 format makes sense for the organization.

For SWIFT Corporate customers the migration of SWIFT messages to ISO 20022 is mandatory only in the interbank area and SWIFT will continue support of the FIN messages under the SCorE framework. However, this does not mean that all change can be avoided as the migration will have an effect on corporates in the end-to-end flows. For example, the mandatory use of structured party information is scheduled – something corporates should not ignore.

If you use Bankline Direct (host to host) - changes will be required which will be communicated in time for compliance to be achieved.

For classic Bankline or Digital Online Banking there will be no changes required.

Bankline will in due course be enhancing its supported file formats to include an ISO20022 XML version. The existing CSV format will also be extended to support ISO20022 fields definitions. Use of these new formats will not be mandated.