Early adopters highlight key benefits of richer data as community enters final year of the MT/ISO 20022 cross-border coexistence period for payments instructions.
Payments are entering a new era with the introduction of the ISO 20022 standard as the common language for payments worldwide.
Early adopters are already beginning to see improvements, including increased interoperability across systems and enhanced processing capabilities, but more are expected as momentum builds towards the 2025 deadline.
Enabling the community’s transition to ISO 20022
As we continue to deliver on our vision to enable instant and frictionless cross-border transactions, ISO 20022’s rich and structured data will play an essential role.
When the community decided to migrate to ISO 20022, we were asked to support the industry with the transition. Since March 2023, we’ve enabled a period of coexistence, converting messages between MT and ISO 20022 format. This has allowed early adopters to already start to benefit from ISO 20022’s richer and more structured data.
Financial institutions that have finished their conversions have said they’re already seeing benefits, such as better harmonisation between payment systems, and enhanced compliance thanks to the standard’s richer data. Institutions expect to see increased benefits as momentum builds to November 2025, with more institutions completing their migrations, and ISO 20022 becoming the norm.
Supporting the community beyond November 2025
Swift will continue to support the community well after the November 2025 deadline and help the payments industry realise the full value and potential of adopting ISO 20022.
“Swift has been by the industry’s side since we were asked to support with the move to ISO 20022 and we’ll continue to be there up to and beyond the migration deadline,” says Pat Antonacci, Chief Customer Experience Officer at Swift.
We’re committed to supporting our community to make the most of ISO 20022, to ensure business continuity and a smooth end to coexistence. We’ve also launched a data quality dashboard that gives institutions insights into their data to help them maximise the value of adopting the new standard.
ISO 20022’s richer and more structured data provides a foundation from which financial institutions can make further operational efficiency gains, while offering more innovative solutions to end users. The new standard will help to improve compliance, while corporates will be able to move on from manual tasks such as invoice matching and reconciliation.
Keeping up the momentum
More than one million ISO 20022 messages are now being sent over our network each day in ISO 20022 format, to 220 countries and territories worldwide. As adoption increases, the financial industry is poised to unlock new levels of efficiency and innovation in cross-border payments.
“It’s good to see that some institutions are already beginning to realise the value of their investments in this transformation,” Pat says, “but we’re excited to see the benefits multiply, and become even clearer, as adoption scales.”
The community’s support for ISO 20022:
Sean Mouton, Chief Technology Manager at ABSA said: “The Southern African banks are fully committed to the ISO journey and are driving hard to have fully migrated all payment messages to the new ISO standard by the deadline of November 2025.”
Isabel Schmidt, Executive Platform Owner, Enterprise Payments at BNY said: “November 2025 will be defined as a landmark moment for our industry. And BNY is excited to foster and amplify the value that full industry adoption of ISO 20022’s richer and more structured data provides in order to deliver innovative products and to drive a more unified, standardised global payments ecosystem. As we continue our important work and count down the next 12 months, we are fully engaged in supporting our clients through their remaining transition challenges.”
Celia Ardyasa, Director, International Network Management at Commonwealth Bank of Australia said: “Migrating to ISO 20022 presents a unique opportunity to advance interoperability and drive harmonisation across the financial industry, aligning closely with the G20 roadmap objectives. With the November 2025 deadline fast approaching, it’s crucial that we fully commit to this transition. By doing so, financial institutions can unlock the benefits of enriched, structured data while contributing to a truly interoperable global payments ecosystem.”
Tesy Mathew, Group Head of Cash Product Management at DBS said: “Industry-wide collaboration will help all participants maximise the value of ISO 20022 and leverage the richer data it provides to drive growth and innovation. At DBS, early adoption has helped us uncover significant benefits and address pain-points for our clients, including removing the need for manual invoice matching and reconciliation. For banks to derive longer term operational efficiencies for themselves and clients, multiple parties within the organisation will need to be engaged to drive changes.”
Mr Atanas Mwilu, Head of Operations at Diamond Trust Bank said: “ISO 20022 is a bridge to operational excellence and compliance. We’ve seen benefits including better harmonisation with payment systems, richer debtor and creditor data for compliance purposes, and a much-improved customer experience. It means one standard can be passed on from one financial institution to another, with reduced back-and-forth clarifications, as well as more automation and improved accuracy of reporting – making compliance simpler and more straightforward.”
Mark Evans, Global Head of Cross-Border Payments at HSBC said: "As we approach the November 2025 deadline for ISO 20022 migration, it’s crucial for financial institutions to maintain momentum in adopting this new standard. While significant progress has been made, sustained effort is essential to meet the timeline and ensure industry-wide readiness for a smooth transition. The faster we advance toward a world of enriched data-sharing throughout the payments ecosystem, the sooner we’ll unlock the commercial value ISO 20022 offers. Once adopted at scale, financial institutions will be empowered to innovate with products and services yet to be imagined, driving competitiveness and growth.”
Engin Turhan, EVP, SME and Commercial Banking at QNB Türkiye said: “The transition to ISO 20022 enables us to strengthen our operations through improved data structuring and enhanced message processing capabilities, offering richer, more structured data, enabling better data integrity, validation, and interoperability across systems. I am pleased to announce that we have already enabled outbound transfers with MX messaging and are accepting incoming messages in MX format, well in advance of the official deadline. We believe that there will be an incremental increase in benefits as the entire community transitions to the new structure.”
Dean Henry, Managing Director, Head of Core Money Movement and Platforms at Wells Fargo said: “The conversion to ISO 20022 is a critical milestone for the payments industry as it presents multiple opportunities to improve cross-border transactions and the overall end-to-end customer experience. Wells Fargo is committed to staying on target for working toward the November 2025 timeline so that the industry can make these improvements and begin focusing on enhancements as the next phase.”
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