Why Swift is moving global payments to the ISO 20022 standard

The change is a move to the new ISO 20022 data standard, which will become the main “language” for international bank payments.

Understanding what exactly is changing is not as hard as it sounds. The key point is that this is not a new currency or a new type of transfer. It is about how banks “talk” to each other when they send money from one country to another.

What ISO 20022 Is in Simple Terms

Every international bank transfer contains far more information than just the currency, amount, and recipient details. Along with the money, banks exchange a large block of service data: who the sender and receiver are, which banks are in the chain, what exactly is being paid for, what fees must be charged at each stage, and so on. All of this is packed into a special electronic message.

For many years, Swift used the MT103 and MT202 formats for these messages. They worked reliably but were fairly limited and inflexible: there was not much room to describe the details of a specific transaction, there was a lot of free text, and different banks filled in fields in their own way. As a result, payments often got stuck for a day or more because staff had to clarify the details manually.

ISO 20022 is a new, more expressive and more structured messaging standard. People sometimes call it a “new language for payments.”

It was first developed in 2004 by the International Organization for Standardization. Over the following years, it was tested in pilot infrastructures and individual payment systems. Initially, its rollout was limited, but as financial systems evolved its potential became clearer. Now, two decades later, ISO 20022 is becoming the main standard for digital value exchange.

It uses more mandatory and clearly defined fields, and supporting data must follow strict rules. Until the rules are met, a payment will not be accepted for processing. At the same time, ISO 20022 makes it possible to send more detailed information about the parties to the transaction and the purpose of the payment. This helps banks automatically check transactions against compliance requirements and sanctions lists and makes it easier to track a payment’s path from sender to receiver.

For the global system, this means a lower risk of errors, less manual work for employees, and more options for automation and analytics.

This is why, on November 22, 2025, Swift ends the period when the old and new formats coexist. For cross-border interbank payments, only ISO 20022 will remain.

Who Will Be Affected and What Changes in Practice

The transition first of all concerns banks and other financial institutions connected to the Swift network. Right now, they need to upgrade their internal systems, test exchanges using the new messages, and build backup procedures in case something goes wrong.

For those that fall behind, the risk is obvious: international payments may be processed more slowly, bounce back more often, or fail altogether until the bank adapts to the new rules.

For businesses that regularly send money across borders (exporters, importers, IT companies, marketplaces) the changes will also be noticeable, though indirectly:

• Banks may now ask corporate customers for more detailed information about their counterparties: full address, company identifiers, and a clear description of the purpose of the payment.
   
• Payment templates in online banking and accounting or ERP systems will be updated, with extra fields or built-in tips. These fields cannot simply be ignored.
  
• When the data is filled in correctly, international payments should go through faster and more smoothly, with fewer bank requests to “clarify the purpose of the payment” and fewer random delays.

 For individuals who occasionally send money abroad, the move to ISO 20022 will be almost invisible.

Still, they should be ready for the following:

• when setting up a transfer, the bank may ask for more detail for example, a more precise address for the recipient, additional personal data, or a more specific payment description;
   
• in some payment apps there will be more status updates for each operation, so the customer can see not only that the money has been sent but also the intermediate steps as the payment is processed;
  
• because the data is richer, banks will find it easier to flag transactions that look suspicious from an AML perspective, so some borderline payments may trigger extra questions or document requests.

It is also important to understand what will not change.

Everyday users will still work with the same banking apps, cards, and accounts they are used to. Fees and time frames for transfers under specific products are set by the bank, not by the messaging standard. ISO 20022 simply gives the underlying infrastructure a more modern and convenient language for communication.

Over the longer term, this transition will lay the groundwork for more advanced services: better payment tracking, automated reporting for businesses, and instant matching of payments with invoices. For the mass customer, however, the main takeaway is simple: the global payment system is getting a bit smarter and more careful with data, so cross-border payments should cause fewer headaches: even if, on the surface, everything still looks the same.