With the end of the co-existence period approaching in November 2025, as of September 2024, 25% of global payments traffic on Swift is now in ISO 20022. However, in many countries like Australia and Switzerland, the adoption rate is much higher, reaching around 70%. We will also see a huge jump in adoption from PSPs that are part of the European Payment Council’s SEPA Inst Mandate.

Either way, financial institutions have certainly underestimated the size of the ISO project. This has led to a lack of testing, whether that be internal or buddy testing, insufficient understanding of the complexity of translation, and ways to integrate message storage. Additionally, transitioning to ISO 20022 is not just an IT or an operations project, it involves every single function within the bank. If there is no company-wide education, then the project will falter and then fail. This is particularly important when you think about customer-facing functions within your FI. Finally, it is vital for the whole ecosystem to be ready at the same time. ISO is all about cooperation, co-existence, and collaboration, and that doesn’t work if there is a break in the chain because some banks are behind in their roll-out. This will cause huge frustration with correspondent banking partners within the transaction chain, who will now experience friction and additional costs despite meeting the deadline themselves.

Join Bottomline, Swift, HSBC, and other industry experts as they discuss the current status of the ISO 20022 migration and the key next steps to ensure that you can meet the deadlines and fully maximise on the benefits of the new standard.

• What is the current status of CBPR+ & ISO 20022 migrations?
• How do you address the main barriers to ISO adoption by Nov 2025?
• End-to-end processing chain readiness
• Being able to support the additional data and structure
• Counterparty acceptance
• What are some of the use cases for fully leveraging the benefits of ISO as an opportunity for growth and not just another compliance upgrade?
• What are the next steps to prepare for the end of the co-existence period?