At its March 2020 meeting, the SWIFT Board and Executive endorsed plans for SWIFT to support financial institutions' payments and securities businesses and make the platform richer, smarter and faster. SWIFT says it will enable transactions to move instantly and frictionless from account-to-account anywhere in the world across the end-to-end payments chain.

Acting on feedback from the community, SWIFT says it will enable ISO 20022 messages for cross-border payments and cash reporting businesses starting from the end of 2022, which extends the originally announced date by one year, so that banks can adopt at their own pace, and reduce the total industry costs of realizing the benefits of ISO 2022 together with the new platform. This modifies timings announced to the community in September 2018 in view of the new strategic direction.

The work already undertaken by the community for ISO 20022, including data remediation, channel improvements and back-office processing is not wasted and will play a critical role in enabling future innovation by banks. The end-date to enable full ISO 20022 for cross-border payments remains as originally planned, November 2025. The co-existence period for current SWIFT MT messages and a new API-based exchange will last until that date.

This means that financial institutions can maintain existing standards or migrate, and plan change at their own pace in line with their own innovation priorities.

Key highlights of the new approach are as follows.

The new approach impacts SWIFT cross-border payments and cash management messages only. SWIFT support for market infrastructure (MI) ISO 20022 migration initiatives, including TARGET2 and Eurosystem Market Infrastructure Gateway (ESMIG), Bank of England (new RTGS) and other MIs is not affected.

New SWIFT capabilities will maintain complete data and state information for transactions centrally, relieving institutions in a payment processing chain of the obligation to pass on complete data and eliminating the problem that intermediaries may ‘break the chain'.

Improved transaction data quality through the use of ISO 20022 definitions and structures remains a key community objective and a cornerstone of the new approach.

Centralized orchestration, translation and protocol mediation services will enable institutions to continue with the formats and protocols they use today, and to implement ISO 20022 at their own pace without impacting the rest of the community.

To avoid community investment in a short-lived, messaging-only ISO 20022 solution, use of the existing SWIFT MT standard for cross-border and cash reporting will be extended by one year. Use of ISO 20022 for cross-border payments and cash reporting will be phased in under the new approach from the end of 2022.

From the end of 2022 the MT standard will be supported for backward compatibility purposes only. New developments will be based on ISO 20022 data, and will require institutions to implement structured data capabilities.

As originally planned MT category 1, 2 and 9 messages used in cross-border and cash reporting payments will be decommissioned in November 2025.

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At its March 2020 meeting, the SWIFT Board and Executive endorsed plans for SWIFT to support financial institutions' payments and securities businesses and make the platform richer, smarter and faster. SWIFT says it will enable transactions to move instantly and frictionless from account-to-account anywhere in the world across the end-to-end payments chain.

Acting on feedback from the community, SWIFT says it will enable ISO 20022 messages for cross-border payments and cash reporting businesses starting from the end of 2022, which extends the originally announced date by one year, so that banks can adopt at their own pace, and reduce the total industry costs of realizing the benefits of ISO 2022 together with the new platform. This modifies timings announced to the community in September 2018 in view of the new strategic direction.

The work already undertaken by the community for ISO 20022, including data remediation, channel improvements and back-office processing is not wasted and will play a critical role in enabling future innovation by banks. The end-date to enable full ISO 20022 for cross-border payments remains as originally planned, November 2025. The co-existence period for current SWIFT MT messages and a new API-based exchange will last until that date.

This means that financial institutions can maintain existing standards or migrate, and plan change at their own pace in line with their own innovation priorities.

Key highlights of the new approach are as follows.

The new approach impacts SWIFT cross-border payments and cash management messages only. SWIFT support for market infrastructure (MI) ISO 20022 migration initiatives, including TARGET2 and Eurosystem Market Infrastructure Gateway (ESMIG), Bank of England (new RTGS) and other MIs is not affected.

New SWIFT capabilities will maintain complete data and state information for transactions centrally, relieving institutions in a payment processing chain of the obligation to pass on complete data and eliminating the problem that intermediaries may ‘break the chain'.

Improved transaction data quality through the use of ISO 20022 definitions and structures remains a key community objective and a cornerstone of the new approach.

Centralized orchestration, translation and protocol mediation services will enable institutions to continue with the formats and protocols they use today, and to implement ISO 20022 at their own pace without impacting the rest of the community.

To avoid community investment in a short-lived, messaging-only ISO 20022 solution, use of the existing SWIFT MT standard for cross-border and cash reporting will be extended by one year. Use of ISO 20022 for cross-border payments and cash reporting will be phased in under the new approach from the end of 2022.

From the end of 2022 the MT standard will be supported for backward compatibility purposes only. New developments will be based on ISO 20022 data, and will require institutions to implement structured data capabilities.

As originally planned MT category 1, 2 and 9 messages used in cross-border and cash reporting payments will be decommissioned in November 2025.