ISO 20022 in bytes

ISO 20022 in bytes for payments: One month to go

Sibos 2025 is now behind us. It was a landmark event with 12,500+ participants engaging in inspirational sessions ranging from digital forms of value to expediting payments. And, of course, ISO 20022 and the opportunities it offers. Now, it’s time to focus to the end of coexistence for ISO 20022 for CBPR+, which is just around the corner.

The 2025 CBPR+ deadline is only one month away. The November deadline means that financial institutions must ensure they have adopted the ISO 20022 global payment standard. Otherwise, they may need to do last-minute preparations to avoid any adverse impact on their organisation and customers.

ISO 20022 in bytes for payments: One month to go

October 2025 edition

ISO 20022 for CBPR+: Last minute preparations for the end of coexistence

As the community transition continues, we’re seeing a daily increase in the ISO 20022 volumes. In September, the average daily ISO 20022 payment instruction messages reached more than 60%. Now we must look ahead to the end of coexistence weekend and ensure we are fully prepared.

For those institutions that are ISO 20022 ready:

• Test to ensure that all inbound processing does not require MT before you opt out of In-flow translation.
• Opt out of In-flow translation by 19th December 2025 to avoid charges.

• Ensure you have tested Usage Identifier changes that are included in the SR25 upgrade of CBPR+ messages as old versions will not work after 22 November 2025. Test all the upgraded messages in FINplus pilot future environment, which have been available since July.
  For those institutions that are not yet ISO 20022 ready:

• Understand the impact: Use our ISO 20022 toolkit to check how you will be affected after the coexistence period comes to an end.

• Test: Perform testing and validation, including testing contingency processing if you will need to rely on it (details in the SR25 Release Guide). You can also request TSP to send an MT message to you and receive a pacs.008 to test the MT to ISO 20022 conversion.

• Understand the contingency processing: After 22 Nov, no FIN MT payment instruction messages will be delivered on FIN, so understand what contingency processing might mean for you.

Q&A on preparing for 22 November

What are the changes taking place on 22 November 2025?

The four elements comprising the changes for Payment Instructions that will take place on 22 November 2025:

• Standards Release 2025 (SR2025) – MT (FIN)
• Standards Release 2025 (SR2025) – ISO 20022 (FINplus) See the Release Note for details.
• ISO 20022 end of coexistence – the coexistence period for the migration to ISO 20022 of cross-border payment instructions exchanged between Financial Institutions (SUPE and/or NOSU categories) is scheduled to end on 22 November 2025. For more information, see Knowledge Base article 6000054.
• Contingency processing for cross-border payment instructions will be activated. The complete rules description is documented under the Standards Release Guide 2025 in the Knowledge Centre in two documents:
  • Contingency Processing Network Validated Rules
  • Contingency Processing FIN Error Codes

When will the changes be made?

The general maintenance window is between Saturday 15:00 GMT and Sunday 05:00 GMT.

Where can I see information on the status of the changes?

Check Operational Status page. Ensure your operational staff are ready to perform operational checks after the maintenance window.

Check Knowledge Centre article 5025675 Standards Release 2025 Activation planned during Maintenance Window 22-23 November 2025 (including contingency processing) for latest updates.

What should I do to prepare my Operational Teams?

We recommend that you expect the best outcome but also prepare for any operational issue:

• Before 15:00 GMT on Saturday, ensure all pending FIN and FINplus messages are transmitted. Compliance teams should approve or reject all pending MT and ISO 20022 messages.
• Ensure your operational processes for standards release activation are ready.
• Ensure you are prepared -- and have access to -- our troubleshooting guides in case you need support (see the troubleshooting section of the ISO 20022 support page).

Where can I find help understanding how MTs map to ISO 20022 messages?

Refer to the CBPR+ translation portal for details on how MT messages translate to ISO 20022 messages. To gain access, make a request in the portal. (Please note that it may take 3-5 days for your access to be activated.)

Where can I find troubleshooting information in case I have any issues?

Check the ISO 20022 support page for available resources and online help.

Payment confirmations and ISO 20022 migration

As customers complete their transition to ISO 20022 at the end of the coexistence period, they must ensure they’ve enabled automated confirmation to the Tracker for all pacs.008 messages received.

MT101 interbank ‘relay’: What actions do you need to take?

If your bank sends or receives MT 101 ‘relay’ messages (interbank), then please read the Knowledge Base (KB) article Rulebook for Payment Initiation Relay. The Rulebook for Payment Initiation Relay provides the common framework for performing payment initiations ‘relay’ in ISO 20022. We highly recommend all Forwarding Agents and Debtor Agents to accede to this rulebook and they promote it with their business counterparts.

• If you acceded to the rulebook before 01 October 2025 then you will benefit from the FINplus RMA bootstrap of the pain.001 based upon the accession of your existing ‘relay’ counterparts.
• If you missed the 01 October 2025 deadline, you will have to manage the RMA creation manually through the RMA Portal with each counterpart individually, independent of the rulebook accession. Even if you missed the 1 October 2025 deadline for the RMA bootstrap, your institutions should still consider acceding to the rulebook. There you can view the ISO 20022 Payments Initiation Relay Rulebook Directory which lists your peers who have already acceded.

ISO 20022 Roadmap for Non-instruction messages

As a reminder, in August we published the roadmap for the adoption of CBPR+ ISO 20022 messages. We developed this roadmap with the community to outline a realistic timeline to achieve the ambition to retire MTs and migrate to equivalent ISO 20022 messages. Start your preparations now for the changes coming in 2026 and beyond.

Have you started to prepare for Hybrid or Structured Postal Addresses? We are ready to help!

After 22 November 2025, Hybrid Postal Addresses will be available, and the community will need to prepare for the removal of fully unstructured addresses by November 2026. Payments that do not contain a structured town name and country will be rejected.

To help the community meet this deadline and to encourage quality network data, we are launching an NLP-based AI software to extract and/or infer Town Name and Country from unstructured addresses. A range of teams can use this model, including operations and technology teams at financial institutions, corporate clients, service bureaus and Swift partners. The software is designed to fix legacy databases and corporate-originated payments that contain free format address structures. It will be available in November 2025 on the Swift Download Centre, open-source and free of charge.

Follow our FAQ for more details: ISO 20022: The Swift AI address structuring model | Swift or drop your question via email to swift.address.structuring@swift.com.

Other important ISO 20022 related news

Market Infrastructures: Building a stronger global network

• The momentum for ISO 20022 migration continues to grow, with 32 RTGS PMIs adopting the new standard.
• We continue to see Payment Market Infrastructures (PMIs) prepare their own domestic solutions to enable ISO 20022 for payments – with many still intending to migrate before November 2025. Most recently we saw Taiwan, Poland and Albania celebrate successful migrations, meaning that a significant number of Swift-connected PMIs have now enabled ISO 20022 for their participants. These PMIs account for an impressive 84.6% of Swift’s global PMI traffic volume.
• Swift’s ISO Accelerator Pack remains a valuable resource for helping PMIs fast-track their migration and realise the benefits of ISO 20022 adoption.

Case Management: Transforming Exceptions and Investigations

Reminder: What is Case Management?

Case Management promotes operational efficiency by centrally facilitating the exchange of messages for both E&I and payment cancellation (Stop and Recall) purposes. As part of the migration to ISO 20022, Case Management supports the use of structured MX messages (camt.110/111 for E&I and camt.056/029 for payment cancellations) – delivering message clarity and enabling automation of processes. Full usage of Case Management will be mandatory beginning November 2027.

Latest news and updates

• Updated KB Article: See full migration timelines and product scope
• New Technical Materials: Case Orchestrator (for E&I) User Guide and Rulebook Advanced Information for SR2025
• Adoption Status (as of October 25): 140 banks live and 145 banks testing

Enhancing the corporate payment experience

Cash reporting messages (camt.052/053/054) will be available from Standards Release 2025 in November and the Usage Guidelines are already available. By bringing ISO 20022 to SCORE, we’re ensuring the community can capture richer data capture at the source and enable end-to-end data preservation throughout the payment chain.

Payment initiation messages (pain.001 and pain.002) are already live for corporate-to-bank exchange for all SCORE participants.

To help corporates in their ISO 20022 journey, we’ve provided:

• Usage Guidelines: SCOREPlus SR2025 (Cash Management)
• Usage Guidelines: SCOREPlus SR2025 (Payment Initiation)
• How Swift is transforming the corporate payment experience: Webinar recording
• ISO 20022 for corporates | Swift.com
• FAQs
• Knowledge Centre dedicated support page

Discover the new MT vs ISO 20022 Flows Dashboard – Now Available in Observer Analytics

We’re pleased to announce that the redesigned MT vs MX Flows dashboard is now available to all Observer Analytics users. The updated view offers a richer and more complete picture of your messaging performance and costs in your ISO 20022 migration journey:

• Clearer visuals to compare MT/MX flows and spot key trends quickly
• New metrics such as speed and deducted charges for deeper performance insights
• Flexible filters to analyse by counterparty, currency and message type The legacy version of the dashboard will be decommissioned on 30 December. We encourage you to start using the redesigned dashboard now to take full advantage of its improved features. For more information, visit the Observer Analytics homepage.

[Webinar] Optimising payment costs with Observer Insights and Analytics

Join us for the third and final edition of our cross-border payments efficiency webinar series, where we explore how financial institutions can optimise payment costs while maintaining speed and transparency for all payment messages.

This session will dive into how optimising deducted charges helps improve payment efficiency, supports better customer outcomes and aligns with global goals such as the G20’s roadmap to evolve cross-border payments.

Register here

What to expect:

• Learn how to identify and reduce message charges by all participants in cross-border transactions.
• Assess where FX currency conversion had been processed in the payment chain.
• Find out how cost optimisation complements transparency and speed to deliver a holistic payment experience. Don’t forget to listen to the previous edition of our webinar series to learn how Swift’s Observer portfolio helps financial institutions benchmark, monitor and enhance the Transparency KPI in line with G20 cross-border payments targets.

Listen to the recording

Quality data for a seamless ISO 20022 future

As the ISO 20022 coexistence period draws nearer to a close, an opportunity begins – transforming migration into measurable value. Ensuring high-quality structured data in every message you send or receive is key to maximising interoperability, improving automation, and achieving frictionless payments.

Swift’s Data Quality Analytics helps you monitor, analyse and enhance the quality of your ISO 20022 messages, giving you full insight into where data can be improved for operational efficiency and compliance excellence. With built-in benchmarking and Transaction Manager Business Validation rules reporting, Data Quality Analytics enables you to turn data quality into business advantage.

See how Data Quality Analytics can elevate your payments – explore the solution today.

Partners Corner: Payment Application Providers

As we approach the end of coexistence, we need business application providers to ensure that their systems are upgraded for SR 2025 and additional FIN validation rules for Contingency Processing.

For 2026, payments applications must be ready to send and receive pacs messages in Hybrid Address format, the introduction of the FI-to-FI pain.001 relay and the exchange of camt.054 Debit Credit Notification (which triggers an embedded MT103/202 payment advice).

We encourage financial institutions to utilise the Translation Portal to facilitate their migration to ISO 20022. It is a highly valuable resource and free of charge. Vendors can be granted access to the Translation Portal in three scenarios, all based on purchasing a payable license:

• A simple license to access the CBPR+ Translation Portal (CBPR+ Translation Library),
• A license to enable the embedding of the Translator in your application (Embedded Translator Runtime),
• An option to enable custom programming (Embedded Translator Designer) Finally, the Self-Attestation window will reopen November 2025, and partners must meet the mandatory requirement of the form and perform relevant testing to be listed on Swift.com.

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What the community is saying

• ISO 20022 within the community ###

How Swift is evolving cross-border payment transparency in Vietnam. For five decades, Swift has been at the heart of global financial innovation – connecting institutions, standardising processes and enabling secure, seamless transactions across borders. Today, that legacy continues in Vietnam, where Swift is helping modernise cross-border payments in line with the G20 goals of speed, cost-efficiency, transparency and accessibility.

Raiffeisen Bank

Top 10 lessons from migrating to ISO 20022

Lloyds Bank

Lloyds Bank migrates to ISO 20022

Scotiabank

How Scotiabank have embraced ISO 20022 to improve efficiency and ensure compliance.

Resources

Webinars, training, and other key learning resources

Webinar Webinar overview Webinar Past webinars Training Training catalogue Web page A brief introduction to the Ultimate Parties field Training Learning modules

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