MyStandards

MyStandards is a collaborative web application used to manage standards definitions and industry usage guidelines more efficiently. Benefits includes cost savings, risk reduction, quality improvement and enhanced collaboration with counterparties. 

It provides centralised standards-related content and powerful features for premium standards management and implementation: 

Analytical features help developers and analysts compare specifications and guidelines and assess the impact of standards releases. 
Documentation features reduce ambiguity and create fit-for-purpose business or technical (machine-readable) references. 
Distribution features allow you to manage access to your content and your community of users. 
Maintenance features provide an easy way to manage and maintain your publications. 
Customised online testing portals where your team and your clients can easily test messages against your own specifications. 

MyStandards contains MT and ISO 20022 base standards (provided by Swift and the ISO 20022 Registration Authority) and usage guidelines. There are more than 150 organisations (market practice groups, financial institutions, such as banks and market infrastructures) publishing usage guidelines in MyStandards. 

MT and ISO 20022 base standards are maintained on an annual basis and can be found here for MT and here for ISO 20022. 

MyStandards is also the home for Cross-Border Payments and Reporting Plus (CBPR+) specifications which define how ISO 20022 will be used for cross-border payments and cash reporting on our network. These can be found here. 

MyStandards supports the publication, sharing and testing of proprietary format messages, including FpML, FIX, CSV, BACS, NACHA, and CFONB. 

Usage guidelines, often referred to in MyStandards as ‘UG’, are also known as “message implementation guidelines,” or ”format specifications”. 

It’s a customised base standard (MT or ISO 20022) that is typically used within a particular business context or community. A key criterion is that it always remains valid against the base standard it was derived from (e.g. “CBPRPlus-pacs.008.001.08_STP_FIToFICustomerCreditTransfer” is a usage guideline derived from the “FI To FI Customer Credit Transfer V08 - pacs.008.001.08” base standard). 

Usage guidelines are usually defined by organisations that need to specify in more detail how the base standards are used by them at a regional, local, bilateral or even internal level. 

MT and ISO 20022 are the two main formats natively supported in the application. Users can then create usage guidelines on these base standards to share within their respective communities. 

MyStandards also supports the publication, sharing and testing of any format, such as FpML, FIX, CSV, BACS, NACHA or CFONB. An additional product (Swift Translator) is required to define and manage these other formats before uploading them into MyStandards. 

There are four main licensing levels: 

• Free − enables you to browse and access any publicly available content (e.g. base message or market practice usage guidelines), as well as restricted access content as shared with the user by the specifications owner (e.g. specific MI or bank message specifications). 
• Lite − enables you to access features, such as version comparison between MT and ISO 20022 base standards or usage guidelines, and a message validation service, both on MT and ISO 20022 base standards (past, current and future versions). It doesn’t allow publishing and sharing of user-owned usage guidelines. 
• Premium − on top of the Lite license, this enables you to create, publish and share specifications with your counterparties or community. 
• Premium+ − on top of the Premium licence, this enables you to create, manage, publish, and monitor the testing portals shared with your counterparties or community. 

Other special licences are available, such as for market practice groups (upon request). 

As an individual, you can access the service free of charge, by using a valid swift.com account. 

As an organisation (financial institution, market infrastructure, corporate or partner), you can subscribe to a group license to benefit from advanced features by submitting an order form on swift.com. 

For a more detailed overview of the advanced features, consult the Licencing Options page, or contact your account manager. 

Yes. Market infrastructures, financial institutions and corporates can subscribe to MyStandards even if they aren’t Swift customers (don’t have a BIC). Software vendors and partners interested in a paid license can contact their account manager or email us at mystandards@swift.com. 

MyStandards is a very intuitive and easy to use application. Once you set up your swift.com account, you can access the tool and browse through the content. For more advanced features, like publishing usage guidelines, we offer a one-time onboarding package to help you maximise the use of the application. For more information, contact your Account Manager or email us at mystandards@swift.com. 

For specifications consumers, centralised standards information and product features provide the following benefits: 

• Save time finding and understanding standards-related information that is consistently defined across the industry. 
• Streamlined analysis of standards release impacts. 
• Simplified management of different industry standards, with advanced comparison features. 
• Easier system implementations with machine-readable formats. 

For specifications publishers, end-to-end usage guideline management means: 

• Improved customer on-boarding (state-of-the-art formalisation, fit-for-purpose documentation chains, effective distribution and community management). 
• Simplified management and maintenance of your guidelines (analytical framework, migration tools). 
• Bridging the gap between customer documentation and your implementation by starting from a single source and creating different perspectives. 

Learn more about the benefits and features of MyStandards Lite and MyStandards Premium. 

The Readiness Portal is the testing capability feature available as part of the MyStandards Premium+ license. It’s a feature that simplifies customer onboarding and migration by providing self-service standards testing capabilities. 

Using the Readiness Portal, financial institutions and market infrastructures can create customer-facing portals offering: 

• Validation of message instances against usage guidelines. 
• Full integration with documentation on MyStandards. 
• Tailored and focused support. 
• Sample messages to implement guidelines. 
• A shared view of progress. 

The Readiness Portal significantly reduces: 

• Work for your integration team, as it provides a self-service solution for your customers to validate their messages. 
• Test environment setup time, providing easily configured web solutions, fully driven by MyStandards usage guidelines. 
• Onboarding risk by providing tools to monitor customer progress and help them along the way. 

Learn more about the testing features available with MyStandards Premium+.