Global Financial Community Completes Switch to ISO 20022, Paving the Way for New Levels of Cross-Border Payment Speed and Innovation Around the World​

The global financial community has unleashed a new era for global payments innovation with universal adoption of ISO 20022 as the standard language for cross-border payments worldwide. The final switch happened on 22 November, with the end of coexistence with the traditional MT message format.

The move elevates customer experience in today’s fiat currency system in support of the G20 goals for international payments, enabling faster, more efficient and data-driven payments.

The landmark achievement reflects years of coordinated work across financial institutions, payment market infrastructures, and the wider Swift community – starting in 2018 when the financial community chose to adopt the standard for cross-border payments. Endorsed by the G20 and the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI), ISO 20022 is considered a key enabler of an enhanced cross-border payments experience. It elevates the payment experience, while its flexible and extensible format provides a strong foundation for digital transformation.

In March 2023, Swift began a period of coexistence with the MT format for cross-border payments and reporting (CBPR+) to enable a smooth transition for the community.  That coexistence period ended over the weekend, and ISO 20022 is now required for all payment instructions.

Yesterday we observed 97% of payment instructions sent using ISO 20022. A conversion service is in place to automatically convert remaining MT instructions to the ISO 20022 format for a period to ensure the smooth flow of global payments.

Jerome Piens, Chief Operations Officer at Swift, said: “This has been a huge achievement for the global industry, and a collective effort in upgrading the global payments experience. ISO 20022’s rich, structured data is foundational to the future of payments – and a cornerstone of Swift’s strategy to enable an instant, frictionless, interoperable, and inclusive future. This switch will both enhance risk and control capabilities to better support compliance requirements and lay the foundations for the next generation of payments.

“The new standard will power our strategic initiative to create a payment scheme to guarantee a consistently fast, predictable and transparent experience for retail customers worldwide, and will also enable the foundations for our blockchain-based shared ledger, to allow the trusted movement of tokenised value, thereby bringing together TradFi and DeFi for a fully interoperable financial ecosystem of the future.”

Now that the community has successfully transitioned to ISO 20022, the focus can shift from format readiness to realising the value of structured data. Swift is continuing to work with the community to realise the full benefits of the new standard, providing guidance, tools, and analytics to help institutions measure, optimise and innovate using ISO 20022 data.