ISO 20022
ISO 20022 is an international standard for exchanging electronic messages between financial institutions.
ISO 20022 resolves the limitations of MT messaging formats by offering rich, structured, and dedicated data fields, eliminating the need for workarounds that create friction, errors, and inefficiencies. It enables financial institutions to meet growing regulatory demands for transparency and accuracy by providing specific fields for parties involved, payment purposes, and AML-related details.
This streamlined approach improves operational efficiency, reduces message rejections and investigations, enhances sanctions screening, and ultimately leads to a better customer experience.
Benefits of ISO 20022
Enhanced customer satisfaction
Due to an upgraded service
Improved digital compliance and future proofing
As the industry moves towards greater digitisation, ISO 20022 ensures that banks are equipped to handle evolving payment technologies and innovations.
Increased efficiency and straight-through processing (STP) rates
Due to a more standardised format and structure, banks can automate processes and reduce manual intervention.
Reduced costs
with the simplification of processes such as investigations, data analytics and reporting
Why ISO 20022 migration?
The adoption of a global communication standard is essential to overcoming the inefficiencies and fragmentation that currently hinder the financial industry. ISO 20022, as a unified and structured messaging standard, addresses these challenges by transforming how financial institutions, market infrastructures, and participants exchange data.
From funds transfers and cross-border payments to securities transactions and regulatory reporting, ISO 20022 enables seamless interoperability, streamlined processes, and enhanced automation.
Historically, the use of diverse, inconsistent standards has created barriers to efficiency and introduced friction across the global financial ecosystem. ISO 20022 eliminates these issues by providing a common framework for rich and structured data exchange, paving the way for a more interconnected and efficient industry.
Recognising its transformative potential, major financial stakeholders—including central banks, financial institutions, and Swift - have embraced ISO 20022. This shift is further driven by growing demands for transparency, accuracy, and compliance in payment systems, ensuring that the financial industry is better equipped to meet evolving regulatory and customer expectations.
As part of this migration, financial institutions need to assess their payment systems to ensure compliance before mandatory adoption deadlines.
What makes ISO 20022 different?
ISO 20022 stands out because it is a modern, global, and highly structured messaging standard that addresses the limitations of legacy formats, offering unparalleled benefits to the financial industry:
- Richer and structured data: Unlike older messaging formats that rely on unstructured and size-restricted fields, ISO 20022 provides detailed, structured, and dedicated fields for financial data. This eliminates the need for workarounds, reduces errors, and enhances data quality.
- Global interoperability: ISO 20022 unifies financial messaging standards worldwide, enabling seamless communication between institutions, market infrastructures, and corporates across borders. This fosters a truly interconnected financial ecosystem.
- Improved automation and efficiency: With standardised messaging, banks and institutions can automate processes more effectively, reducing manual interventions and operational costs.
- Flexibility and scalability: ISO 20022 is designed to adapt to evolving payment systems and new use cases, making it future proof for upcoming innovations and changes in the financial landscape.
- Enhanced compliance and transparency: Its structured data fields facilitate better compliance with regulatory requirements (e.g., sanctions screening and anti-money laundering measures), ensuring greater transparency and trust in payment processing.
Overall, ISO 20022 is more than just a standard - it’s a transformative framework that drives efficiency, compliance, and innovation in the financial industry.
How this affects cross-border payments
Financial institutions will follow CBPR+ guidelines, while corporates have more flexibility under SCORE.
Financial institution journey:
Cross-border Payments and Reporting Plus (CBPR+) defines a set of specifications for ISO 20022 financial messages exchanged over the Swift network. These new messages, often referred to as 'MX' messages, replace the legacy MT messages with an XML-based format that offers richer, structured data and better alignment with modern financial requirements. CBPR+ focuses on financial institution-to-financial institution (FI-FI) flows and has been officially supported by Swift since March 2023.
Our organisation is fully aligned with the CBPR+ roadmap. We are focusing on the implementation of Customer Credit Transfers (pacs.008), Financial Institution Credit Transfers (pacs.009 core and related COV), Payment Initiation Relay (Interbank pain.001v9), and supporting messages such as Payment Cancellations (camt.056), with a target completion date of 22 November 2025.
Additionally, we are advancing efforts in Cash Reporting and are open to testing related messages such as camt.052 (Account Report), camt.053 (Statement of Account), and camt.054 (Debit/Credit Notifications).
These efforts position us at the forefront of modernising cross-border payment systems, ensuring greater efficiency, transparency, and compliance.
Certain financial institutions, such as supervised financial institutions (SUPE) and non-supervised entities (NOSU), are required to migrate to CBPR+ by 22 November 2025. While MT and MX formats currently coexist, the transition is being carefully managed, with MT messages set to phase out by November 2025.
ISO 20022's adoption resolves the data limitations and inefficiencies of the legacy MT format, enabling structured and standardised data. This improves compliance, automation, and interoperability while enhancing transparency and efficiency in cross-border payments.
Corporate journey:
Corporates under CORP and TRCO categories can continue using MT formats, as there is no end of coexistence currently foreseen for SCORE flows. Corporate-to-bank and bank-to-corporate messaging will continue over FIN and FileAct channels as they do today.
There’s no end date from Swift on supporting FIN MT101 between corporates and their banks over Swift; however, this format is gradually becoming a legacy standard with the introduction of structured data.
We will continue to support the current pain.001V2 and pain.001V3 formats, with only minor technical file adjustments required to meet the necessary standards. In addition, the new Payment Initiation (pain.001 V9) format is now available for early adopters through SCOREplus.
Corporates interested in benefiting from ISO 20022 can adopt the SCOREplus usage guidelines, which offer a single ISO 20022 format for payment initiation via pain.001v9 messages.
Furthermore, the FINplus channel is now fully operational, serving as an ISO 20022-enabled option for payment initiation over Swift. Corporates are encouraged to reach out to their Relationship Manager for more information and guidance.
Transaction Manager Platform ISO 20022
Transaction Manager is a platform developed by Swift to support the ISO 20022 migration and provide enhanced messaging capabilities for the Swift community.
The platform keeps a copy of a transaction’s data which can be updated by parties to the transaction using different protocols and formats. It will support the coexistence of MX and MT messages during Swift’s interoperability period of the ISO 20022 migration by preserving rich ISO 20022 transaction data even when an intermediary in a transaction can only send MT messages.
This will benefit financial institutions by:
- Providing them with ample time to ensure that they are MX ready,
- Lowering the implementation risks compared to a big-bang approach,
- Allowing banks to follow the agile approach and
- Facilitating testing.
-
Why ISO 20022 migration?
-
What makes ISO 20022 different?
-
How this affects cross-border payments
-
Transaction Manager Platform ISO 20022
The adoption of a global communication standard is essential to overcoming the inefficiencies and fragmentation that currently hinder the financial industry. ISO 20022, as a unified and structured messaging standard, addresses these challenges by transforming how financial institutions, market infrastructures, and participants exchange data.
From funds transfers and cross-border payments to securities transactions and regulatory reporting, ISO 20022 enables seamless interoperability, streamlined processes, and enhanced automation.
Historically, the use of diverse, inconsistent standards has created barriers to efficiency and introduced friction across the global financial ecosystem. ISO 20022 eliminates these issues by providing a common framework for rich and structured data exchange, paving the way for a more interconnected and efficient industry.
Recognising its transformative potential, major financial stakeholders—including central banks, financial institutions, and Swift - have embraced ISO 20022. This shift is further driven by growing demands for transparency, accuracy, and compliance in payment systems, ensuring that the financial industry is better equipped to meet evolving regulatory and customer expectations.
As part of this migration, financial institutions need to assess their payment systems to ensure compliance before mandatory adoption deadlines.
ISO 20022 stands out because it is a modern, global, and highly structured messaging standard that addresses the limitations of legacy formats, offering unparalleled benefits to the financial industry:
- Richer and structured data: Unlike older messaging formats that rely on unstructured and size-restricted fields, ISO 20022 provides detailed, structured, and dedicated fields for financial data. This eliminates the need for workarounds, reduces errors, and enhances data quality.
- Global interoperability: ISO 20022 unifies financial messaging standards worldwide, enabling seamless communication between institutions, market infrastructures, and corporates across borders. This fosters a truly interconnected financial ecosystem.
- Improved automation and efficiency: With standardised messaging, banks and institutions can automate processes more effectively, reducing manual interventions and operational costs.
- Flexibility and scalability: ISO 20022 is designed to adapt to evolving payment systems and new use cases, making it future proof for upcoming innovations and changes in the financial landscape.
- Enhanced compliance and transparency: Its structured data fields facilitate better compliance with regulatory requirements (e.g., sanctions screening and anti-money laundering measures), ensuring greater transparency and trust in payment processing.
Overall, ISO 20022 is more than just a standard - it’s a transformative framework that drives efficiency, compliance, and innovation in the financial industry.
Financial institutions will follow CBPR+ guidelines, while corporates have more flexibility under SCORE.
Financial institution journey:
Cross-border Payments and Reporting Plus (CBPR+) defines a set of specifications for ISO 20022 financial messages exchanged over the Swift network. These new messages, often referred to as 'MX' messages, replace the legacy MT messages with an XML-based format that offers richer, structured data and better alignment with modern financial requirements. CBPR+ focuses on financial institution-to-financial institution (FI-FI) flows and has been officially supported by Swift since March 2023.
Our organisation is fully aligned with the CBPR+ roadmap. We are focusing on the implementation of Customer Credit Transfers (pacs.008), Financial Institution Credit Transfers (pacs.009 core and related COV), Payment Initiation Relay (Interbank pain.001v9), and supporting messages such as Payment Cancellations (camt.056), with a target completion date of 22 November 2025.
Additionally, we are advancing efforts in Cash Reporting and are open to testing related messages such as camt.052 (Account Report), camt.053 (Statement of Account), and camt.054 (Debit/Credit Notifications).
These efforts position us at the forefront of modernising cross-border payment systems, ensuring greater efficiency, transparency, and compliance.
Certain financial institutions, such as supervised financial institutions (SUPE) and non-supervised entities (NOSU), are required to migrate to CBPR+ by 22 November 2025. While MT and MX formats currently coexist, the transition is being carefully managed, with MT messages set to phase out by November 2025.
ISO 20022's adoption resolves the data limitations and inefficiencies of the legacy MT format, enabling structured and standardised data. This improves compliance, automation, and interoperability while enhancing transparency and efficiency in cross-border payments.
Corporate journey:
Corporates under CORP and TRCO categories can continue using MT formats, as there is no end of coexistence currently foreseen for SCORE flows. Corporate-to-bank and bank-to-corporate messaging will continue over FIN and FileAct channels as they do today.
There’s no end date from Swift on supporting FIN MT101 between corporates and their banks over Swift; however, this format is gradually becoming a legacy standard with the introduction of structured data.
We will continue to support the current pain.001V2 and pain.001V3 formats, with only minor technical file adjustments required to meet the necessary standards. In addition, the new Payment Initiation (pain.001 V9) format is now available for early adopters through SCOREplus.
Corporates interested in benefiting from ISO 20022 can adopt the SCOREplus usage guidelines, which offer a single ISO 20022 format for payment initiation via pain.001v9 messages.
Furthermore, the FINplus channel is now fully operational, serving as an ISO 20022-enabled option for payment initiation over Swift. Corporates are encouraged to reach out to their Relationship Manager for more information and guidance.
Transaction Manager is a platform developed by Swift to support the ISO 20022 migration and provide enhanced messaging capabilities for the Swift community.
The platform keeps a copy of a transaction’s data which can be updated by parties to the transaction using different protocols and formats. It will support the coexistence of MX and MT messages during Swift’s interoperability period of the ISO 20022 migration by preserving rich ISO 20022 transaction data even when an intermediary in a transaction can only send MT messages.
This will benefit financial institutions by:
- Providing them with ample time to ensure that they are MX ready,
- Lowering the implementation risks compared to a big-bang approach,
- Allowing banks to follow the agile approach and
- Facilitating testing.
The Standard Bank Approach
Swift and Standard Bank are constantly re-evaluating the risk elements of the overall changes to accommodate a risk-adverse approach. We have amended our implementation to support a controlled migration for sending ISO messages, while meeting the minimum requirements to receive ISO messages from correspondent banks.
During the coexistence period, CBPR+ Interact (MX) messages will utilise the traditional FIN X character sets to support translation. Several additional special characters will be permitted: all party (agents and non-agents) name and address elements, the related remittance information elements and the remittance information (structured and unstructured) elements.
All Swift users must ensure that they upgrade their interface so that they are able to receive MX messages.
We will have a period of co-existence where Standard Bank will receive, send and process MT, multiformat and ISO message types as detailed in the table below.
Multiformat and ISO Message types
| Type | MT Migration to ISO 20022 CBPR+ MT Message |
MT Migration to ISO 20022 CBPR+ Equivalent CBPR+ ISO 20022 Message |
Standard Bank's Approach |
|---|---|---|---|
| Payment Instructions | MT101 | pain.001 pain.002 in response to pain.001 |
Standard Bank does not send MT101 and will remain receiving the MT101 message post 20 March 2023. The transition to the CBPR+ ISO 20022 format will take place post 20 March 2023 upon conclusion of a bilateral agreement with the sending bank. The receipt of the CBPR+ ISO 20022 message is not enabled on RMA Portal. |
| Payments and Settlements | MT103 MT202 MT202 COV MT210 |
pacs.008 pacs.009 pacs.009 cov pacs.004 pacs.002 (reject only) camt.057 |
Standard Bank will be able to receive both the CBPR+ ISO 20022 messages and the MT messages from 20 March 2023. Standard will continue to send the MT messages from 20 March 2023, and will migrate to sending the CBPR+ ISO 20022 equivalents through a phased migration, post 20 March 2023. |
| Stop and Recall | MT192 MT292 MT196 MT296 |
camt.056 camt.029 (in response to camt.056) |
Standard Bank will be able to receive both the CBPR+ ISO 20022 messages and the MT messages from 20 March 2023. Standard will continue to send the MT messages from 20 March 2023, and will migrate to sending the CBPR+ ISO 20022 equivalents through a phased migration, post 20 March 2023. |
| Statements and notifications | MT900 MT910 MT920 MT935 MT940 MT942 MT950 |
camt.052 camt.053 camt.054 camt.060 |
Standard Bank will only send and receive the MT message format as of 20 March 2023. The transition to the CBPR+ ISO 20022 format will take place post 20 March 2023 upon conclusion of a bilateral agreement with the sending bank. The receipt of the CBPR+ ISO 20022 message is not enabled on the RMA Portal. |
| Cross Border Debits | MT204 | pacs.010 | Standard Bank will only send and receive the MT message format as of 20 March 2023. Standard Bank will migrate to sending the CBPR+ ISO 20022 equivalents upon conclusion of a bilateral agreement with the sending bank. The receipt of the CBPR+ ISO 20022 message will not be enabled on the RMA Portal. |
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