ISO 20022: Standards

What are the benefits of ISO 20022 and how does it differ from MT?

When exchanging financial information, including via MT messages, specialists in different domains or countries have developed their own jargon and can use different words to refer to the same concept. The ISO 20022 standard can help to overcome barriers linked to the use of these different syntaxes and semantics. It is a global, open standard that describes a modelling methodology to capture – in a syntax-independent way – financial business areas, business transactions and associated message flows.

The ISO 20022 methodology starts with the definition of the business model which is a central dictionary of commonly agreed business items used in financial communications. The second layer builds on the first by defining logical messages using the previously defined business concepts. Within these, individual elements, such as ‘InterbankSettlementAmount’ and ‘InterbankSettlementDate’ can be reused. Finally, the syntax (physical representation) of the logical message will be specified.

Thanks to its structured and richer data elements, ISO 20022 enables counterparties, intermediaries, and beneficiaries to increase automation in transaction processing, reducing costly manual interventions, and improving visibility on cash flows and cash positions, for example, in payment transactions. It provides banks with better insight into the business purpose of a financial transaction, enabling the provision of improved value-added services.

Businesses, as payment users, can gain more insight from their payments data into the behaviours and choices of their customers, as more complete and accurate party data leads to more effective and efficient screening, compliance, and anti-money laundering (AML) processes. Lastly, payments scenarios such as ‘Payment on Behalf of’ (POBO) can be fully supported, avoiding complex workarounds.

For further insights on opportunities ISO 20022 offers, make sure to read our ‘ISO 20022 for dummies’ and ‘Supercharge your payments business with ISO 20022’ ebooks.

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Are all business domains migrating

How does ISO 20022 organise financial message definitions?

ISO 20022 is a standards development methodology used by multiple business domains. These include payments clearing and settlement, payment initiation, cash management, securities settlement, asset servicing, account management and reference data.

In 2018, the Swift community decided to adopt  ISO 20022 for cross-border payments and reporting. March 2023 marked the start of the migration with a coexistence period with MT messages.

Payment market infrastructures, including major reserve currencies such as EUR, USD, GBP, SGD, and AUD, are also adopting ISO 20022. Swift encourages and supports the adoption of ISO 20022 by instant and real-time gross settlement systems to align with the richer format of cross-border payments.

We are also helping to enable other market initiatives, including the SRDII and CSDR European regulatory requirements, to complement ISO 15022-based messages in securities. Other business domains will continue to use existing standards (FIN/MTs), including corporate to bank, securities, trade finance, Forex, and market infrastructures.

Cross-border payments and reporting plus (CBPR+) is a workgroup of payments experts whose mission is to create global ISO 20022 Market Practice and Implementation Guidelines to ensure a common roll-out and implementation of ISO 20022 by banks.

CBPR+ usage guidelines define how ISO 20022 messages are to be used for cross-border payments and cash reporting on the Swift network and are to be validated.

The usage guidelines are publicly available on MyStandards and include downloadable XML Schema, PDF and Excel specifications. The MT <> CBPR+ translation rules and logic are available on the CBPR+ translation portal.

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What is HVPS+

High-Value Payments Plus (HVPS+) is a workgroup of payments experts whose mission is to create guidelines on the usage of ISO 20022 for high value payments systems, to be used by domestic communities as a basis in the development of their own, specific market practice.

The HVPS+ usage guidelines are publicly available on MyStandards, and cover payment, clearing and settlement (pacs) and cash management (camt) messages. To ensure consistent usage and interoperability, ISO 20022 guidelines for HVPS+ and CBPR+ are fully aligned, allowing for minor business differences, such as settlement method.

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When will MT messages for cross-border payments and reporting be phased out?

The coexistence period is scheduled to end on 22 November 2025, and this date was reconfirmed by the Swift Board for cross-border FI-to-FI (Financial Institution, either Supervised or Non-supervised) payment instructions at its meeting of June 2024. The use of ISO 20022 cross-border instructions is necessary to enable end-to-end interoperability between financial institutions and between FIs and Payments Market Infrastructures (PMIs). For compliance reasons, it is important to ensure that data – particularly related to payment parties – is not lost or truncated along the end-to-end processing chain. This cannot be guaranteed if a transaction that originates in ISO 20022 is converted to the less rich MT standard as part of its cross-border journey.

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.

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 remain the priority.

Read our dedicated FAQs category and Knowledge Base article 6000054 for more information.

Per community feedback, other MT message types in the scope of migration, including reporting/statements, will not be withdrawn from the FIN service immediately in November 2025. These message types are deprecated, meaning they are no longer maintained by Swift, and disincentives will be introduced at a later date, so FIs are strongly advised to switch to their ISO 20022 equivalents as soon as possible. In particular, ISO 20022 reporting messages support much richer data than MT, and are better aligned with ISO 20022 instructions, so a timely switch to ISO 20022 for reporting is recommended. A community consultation will be undertaken in 2025 to determine a revised date to remove these messages.

Standards Releases during coexistence

Will there be any standards release for MT and MX from now until November 2025?

For payments and cash management messages, the focus of standards releases until November 2025 is on the implementation of new CBPR+ messages as per the roadmap defined by the workgroup.

The Payment Standards Maintenance Group will be discouraged from approving any changes during the MT/MX coexistence period unless they are deemed critical or required for regulatory reasons. After November 2025, the non-instruction messages are still supported on FIN and deprecated.

You can check for updates and announcements of maintenance releases through the annual standards release process.

What new messages will be implemented for CBPR+ during coexistence?

• SR 2023 covers cheques, direct debits, and a few other use cases (cancellation, margin collection).
• SR 2024 covers charges.
• SR 2025 will see the introduction of the camt.025 (“receipt”) and admi.024 (“correspondence” replacing the one-way MT 199/299) messages.

Please always consult MyStandards for the latest scope and usage guidelines of CBPR+ messages.

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Learning about CBPR+ business flows

Where can I find more information on the business flows in which to use the new CBPR+ messages?

The CBPR+ User Handbook published on MyStandards explains how the CBPR+ messages can be used. It captures the changes in payment flows between counterparties, new terminology and concepts, and other details important to customer’s payment operations.

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Will Swift phase out messages other than the CBPR+ ones at the end of coexistence?

CBPR+ aims at migrating cross-border payments and cash reporting messages on the Swift network used in the interbank space. This includes all messages exchanged between Supervised and/or Non-Supervised user categories (SUPE and NOSU). In other words:

• MT message exchanges in the Swift for Corporates (SCORE) service will continue as they are for the foreseeable future.
• Closed User Groups operated by non-Swift entities (i.e. Payment Market Infrastructure Closed User Groups) will continue as they are for the foreseeable future.

Other categories of MT messages (e.g. MT 3xx, 5xx) won’t be impacted and can therefore still be used after the end of coexistence.