Table of contents
What is contingency processing for MT senders?
The coexistence period for the migration to ISO 20022 of cross-border FI-to-FI (Financial institution, either Supervised or Non-supervised) payment instructions is scheduled to end on 22 November 2025, and was reconfirmed in June 2024 (Board IR 904).
MT payment instructions will not be supported by the FIN service for FI-to-FI cross-border flows after that date. Swift is building selective and chargeable short term contingency measures to ensure business continuity for the community and a smooth exit from the coexistence period.
It is crucial that all financial institutions maintain their key objective to migrate to ISO 20022 and complete their implementation without delay.
For the messages in scope, the contingency processing for MT senders will consist of two steps:
- FIN network validation, including additional rules ensuring that the MT payment instruction message can be fully and accurately converted to its ISO 20022 equivalent. Messages that fail validation will be NAK’ed, and no further processing will be performed. The sending party will need to be operationally ready to support these additional NAKs and operational processes to manage such exceptions.
- MT messages that pass network validation will be converted at a cost to their ISO 20022 equivalent (or in rare circumstances aborted) and delivered to the receiver in ISO 20022 format via the FINplus service.
The additional MT validation rules referred to in point 1 were published alongside the Standards MT Release Guide 2025 on 13 December 2024.
What is the difference between contingency processing for MT senders, the in-flow translation service, local translations with Swift Translator and Transaction Manager?
Swift is building selective and chargeable short term contingency measures to ensure business continuity for the community and a smooth exit from the coexistence period.
Starting on 22 November 2025, the contingency processing for MT senders will provide a limited conversion to ISO 20022 of critical MT instructions, ensuring receivers only receive ISO 20022.
The in-flow translation service is available on the FINplus service and creates an MT representation derived from the ISO 20022 message (MX-to-MT translation). The translation operation takes place during the message exchange at Swift and is based on the preferences configured by the receiver. Read our dedicated FAQs category for more information.
Swift Translator is a messaging format translation solution which enables customers to define, validate, and translate messages from and to any messaging format. As the Swift Translator solution is network and interface-independent, it can be deployed locally and integrated in a flexible manner (MT-to-MX and/or MX-to-MT translation).
Transaction Manager maintains full transaction data centrally at Swift and ensures that for in-scope data elements no data is lost, corrupted, or over-written during the transaction life cycle through the application of business validations and data integrity rules which were defined by the community. By safeguarding in-scope payment details along the transaction chain, Transaction Manager aims to improve end-to-end business transaction integrity and transparency. Messages converted by the contingency processing for MT senders will not be processed by Transaction Manager.
What are the messages in scope of contingency processing for MT senders?
Payment instruction message types MT 101 (Single Instruction), MT 103, MT 103 STP, MT 200, MT 202, MT 202 COV, MT 205, MT 205 COV, sent FI-to-FI from 22 November 2025 will be automatically subject to contingency processing.
The following FIN MT payment instruction message types sent FI-to-FI will be removed from the network, immediately Negatively Acknowledged (NAK’ed) and will not be delivered: MT 101 (Multiple Instruction), MT 102, MT 102 STP, MT 103 REMIT, MT 201, MT 203.
Please note that contingency processing for the MT 101 is still under community consultation. More details will be made available in the updates to MT Standards Release Guide 2025 that will be published on 21 February 2025.
How long will contingency processing for MT senders be provided for?
The goal of the contingency MT to ISO 20022 conversion processing is to ensure business continuity for the community and a smooth exit from the coexistence period.
These measures are not intended as a long-term or complete solution for MT users, nor do they constitute an alternative to ISO 20022 adoption. Community conversion to the new standard must remains the priority.
Can I just rely on contingency processing for MT senders as my solution to ISO 20022 readiness?
The goal of the contingency measures is to ensure business continuity for the community and a smooth exit from the coexistence period, not to provide a long-term alternative to native adoption of ISO 20022.
The contingency measures come with operational, transparency, business and financial disincentives, to avoid wide and long-term use.
Operational
- Additional FIN network validation
- Even with FIN validation passed, messages could still be aborted if not translatable.
- Users will need to continuously re-invest into their FIN messaging capabilities as ISO 20022 standards and usage guidelines evolve.
Transparency
Messages converted from MT to ISO 20022 will bear a flag allowing recipients to identify that received messages have been converted by Swift. This allows counterparts still sending FIN MT messages to be identified.
Business
Converted messages will not contain structured and rich data. Users relying on conversion will miss the added value offered by the ISO 20022 syntax and may struggle to meet future regulatory or market requirements, particularly given the continuing evolution of the ISO 20022 standard, which will not be made backward compatible with MT.
Financial
Both contingency processing for MT senders and in-flow translation for payment instruction messages will become chargeable from 1 January 2026
What is the cost of contingency processing for MT senders?
To incentivise customers to complete their ISO 20022 migration and discourage long-term dependency on contingency processing for MT senders, charges will be automatically applied from 1 January 2026 based on the volume of converted MTs. These charges are not included in the Fixed fee or in Swift Essentials.
Swift may decide to increase these charges in the future with prior notice, to ensure continued momentum to complete the migration. Such review will be subject to Swift’s standard governance rules as well as the usual customer notification timelines.
Do I need to opt in for contingency processing for MT senders?
Messages in scope of contingency processing will automatically be checked against the additional FIN validation rules and converted to ISO 20022 as of 22 November 2025. BICs will be automatically enrolled upon sending qualifying MTs, and be charged as of 1 January 2026.
