When the ISO 20022 migration was first announced back in 2018, it represented one of the most significant updates to the payments industry in decades. Banks and Payment Service Providers (PSPs) had long relied on legacy messaging types (MTs) dating back to the 1980s, and for many institutions, the initial focus was ensuring compliance.
These MTs standardised payment messages are used by banks to send payment instructions to one another on the SWIFT network. However, they limit the amount of information that can travel with a payment and are heavily constrained by unstructured data. As a result, they are no longer sufficient for a global financial system that increasingly demands transparency, speed, and resilience.
ISO 20022 introduces a single, data-rich standard for financial messaging. Under SWIFT’s migration, which reached a major milestone in November 2025 with the end of the coexistence period, payments can now carry more detailed and consistent information. This reduces ambiguity, improves data quality throughout the transaction lifecycle, and makes payments easier to track, reducing delays and increasing customer confidence.
This enhanced data also supports more effective anti-money laundering (AML) checks and fraud detection. Moreover, in an age where instant cross-border payments are becoming more common, a shared global messaging standard means that payment data is structured and understood in the same way by every bank and PSP worldwide. This allows payments to move through systems without delay and fewer interruptions. But while the migration is live, it is far from finished.
Ahead of the November 2025 deadline, industry preparedness varied widely. Large tier-one banks were generally well-positioned, while many mid-sized and smaller institutions found themselves racing toward the cutover, diverting resources away from revenue-generating initiatives to meet regulatory timelines.
Many banks and PSPs created various deadlines to complete these projects. The last task was then to make actual test payments with partner banks, first in the test environment and then at the final stage, with actual payments.
Although the November 2025 deadline, when ISO 20022 became the sole standard for cross-border payments, was a major milestone, further mandatory changes are still to come. These include the November 2026 deadlines, which will end support for unstructured messages and retire MT101 request-for-transfer messages, leaving only structured and hybrid formats.
As these deadlines roll around, institutions that are still truncating, flattening, or ignoring ISO-native data will face rising operational friction and growing competitive pressure.
While ISO 20022 enables structured addresses, inconsistent market practice means many payments still rely on free-text fields. This limits straight-through processing and undermines some of the efficiency gains the new standard makes possible. Crucially, it ISO 20022 alone does not guarantee better outcomes; it’s how institutions implement and use the data that matters just as much.
For banks and PSPs willing to move beyond minimum compliance, ISO 20022 opens the door to meaningful service differentiation, particularly for corporate and financial institution clients.
Some providers are already enabling corporate payment clients, such as money service businesses, to include information about the underlying party that they are paying on behalf of the ultimate debtor, directly within the payment message. This is a direct consequence of the ISO20022 migration and would not be possible under legacy messaging standards.
Richer data also enables new commercial models, including usage-based pricing, premium data services, and bundled propositions that move beyond commoditised transaction fees.
Enhanced payment and reporting data allows banks to offer clients real-time cash visibility, enabling better forecasting and liquidity. Through products such as dashboards, alerts, and analytics services, corporates can better understand payment behaviour, counterparty risk, and their working capital performance.
ISO 20022 also underpins modern payment rails and APIs, enabling banks and PSPs to offer instant payments and embedded payment services within corporate workflows.
Furthermore, there are initiatives from SWIFT like SWIFT Go, SWIFT Pre-Validation and SWIFT Case Management which focus on making payments less frictional, more transparent and faster at post-issuing resolution.
Beyond traditional payments, as stablecoins and Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) continue to attract growing attention from treasurers and policymakers, the ISO 20022 migration opens up new opportunities for these digital currencies to move beyond niche innovations to mainstream financial assets.
This is because the new payment formatting establishes a common language needed for digital money to scale alongside traditional financial systems.
By aligning CBDC and stablecoin messaging with the same data standards used by banks and payment systems, central banks and issuers can ensure seamless interoperability with existing rails, cross-border payments, and securities settlement.
The richer data model enables stronger compliance and programmability. ISO 20022 supports more detailed transaction metadata, providing context around each transaction. For regulators and banks, this means improved oversight and control, while for corporates it means that digital money behaves in a similar way to cash.
The ISO 20022 migration should not be seen as a completed project, but as the foundation for the next phase of competition in payments. With further deadlines approaching, including November 2026, banks and PSPs have a clear opportunity to turn richer data into better products, stronger client relationships, and new revenue streams.
Institutions that invest now in data quality, market practice alignment, and product innovation will be well placed to lead. Those that treat ISO 20022 as a one-off compliance exercise risk finding themselves technically compatible, but commercially outpaced.
Matija Novak, Head of Operations at Neo
“ISO20022 migration: a new frontier of opportunity” was originally created and published by Electronic Payments International, a GlobalData owned brand.
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