ISO 20022 may be delayed in its global rollout, but that doesn’t mean banks can afford to put off or ignore upgrading their payments systems to meet this new messaging standard.

Broadly speaking, ISO 20022 is a global standard for electronic messaging between financial institutions and was initially created to give the financial industry a common platform for sending and receiving data about payments.

This new standard will provide much more granular and robust data about payments, which financial institutions can use to ultimately serve their clients better. Around 21 domains of business processes are specified in the ISO 20022 standard, along with the messaging and data necessary to support the different processes.

PaymentsJournal sat with Andrew Foulds, Director of Global Clearing Solutions, Product Management, EMEA at Fiserv, and Steve Murphy, Director of Commercial and Enterprise Payments Service at Javelin Strategy & Research to discuss the current state of ISO 20022 and what to expect. In Part 1, they chat about the importance of ISO 20022 for financial institutions, why it was delayed, and what banks can anticipate around this standard going forward.

PaymentsJournalISO 20022: What Banks Need to Know About Delays and OpportunitiesPaymentsJournal ISO 20022: What Banks Need to Know About Delays and OpportunitiesPaymentsJournaljQuery(document).ready(function ($){var settings_ap96023938 = { design_skin: "skin-wave" ,autoplay: "off",disable_volume:"default" ,loop:"off" ,cue: "on" ,embedded: "off" ,preload_method:"metadata" ,design_animateplaypause:"off" ,skinwave_dynamicwaves:"off" ,skinwave_enableSpectrum:"off" ,skinwave_enableReflect:"on",settings_backup_type:"full",playfrom:"default",soundcloud_apikey:"" ,skinwave_comments_enable:"off",settings_php_handler:window.ajaxurl,skinwave_wave_mode:"canvas",pcm_data_try_to_generate: "on","pcm_notice": "off","notice_no_media": "on",design_color_bg: "111111",design_color_highlight: "ef6b13",skinwave_wave_mode_canvas_waves_number: "3",skinwave_wave_mode_canvas_waves_padding: "1",skinwave_wave_mode_canvas_reflection_size: "0.25",skinwave_comments_playerid:"96023938",php_retriever:"https://www.paymentsjournal.com/wp-content/plugins/dzs-zoomsounds/soundcloudretriever.php" }; try{ dzsap_init(".ap_idx_407854_29",settings_ap96023938); }catch(err){ console.warn("cannot init player", err); } });

Delays Should Not Create Complacency

ISO 20022 was meant to go live globally in November 2022 but got pushed back to March 2023. A big reason was the need for some market infrastructure platforms to iron out technical kinks. Notably, the European Central Bank (ECB) delayed the migration to its Target2 real-time gross settlement system, which would incorporate ISO 20022 standards, which in turn had a “domino effect,” explained Foulds.

“It caused other market infrastructure systems to delay their go-live dates,” added Foulds.

Swift, the global financial messaging network, also announced it will go live with ISO 20022 in March of 2023, but said that institutions will have until 2025 to adopt the new standard.

This may have lulled some financial institutions “into a false sense of security,” said Foulds, but it doesn’t mean that banks should be complacent in migrating to IS...