Is getting onboard with ISO 20022 important to you?
That depends on your priorities: if you value accurate and standardised entry and management of payment and trade transaction communications and details, and you like to ensure your company’s payables and receivables are properly reconciled, it’s going to
make all of that a much more simple and actionable reality. If you’re a bank or credit union, or a fintech, perhaps, you will be able to build a more robust product offering and find it much easier to manage both the basic and complex transactions you route
and accept both domestically and globally for companies and other customers/members.
In both cases, compliance with the new global standard gives everyone lots more helpful information and a deeper dive into the details. Now, invoices and trade terms, for example, will be easily accessible to all parties involved and sharing the same syntax
and frameworks, where before data might be missing, truncated by one side of the relationship, or simply too complicated to list in the limited space and formatting options available in standard payment or trade transactions or messages.
All because of ISO 20022. And its broad appearance on the commerce scene (finally!) might be the biggest news you’ve not really heard much about lately, even if your financial provider’s already making the new formats and functions available to your business.
Despite your being “ahead of the game” and using it now to streamline your payments, trade and securities dealings, card transactions, and foreign exchange. Even if your bank or credit union isn’t quite ready to fully enter the new age of ISO 20022 just yet.
It’s still big news for the industry and especially for business customers of all sizes and sectors.
Despite market and industry distractions, ISO updates keep rolling forward in banks, client ranks
Just emphasising its benefits, over and over, and even proving countless
use cases to its credit - from every angle of the financial field and nearly every industry group and type - hasn’t been enough to push ISO over the line, yet. Right when the new global standard was poised to move into the ‘big time’ this year with a global
rollout, happier customers, and mutually satisfied business partners fuelling dozens of splashy stories on the “positive” financial news front, generative AI-related pomp, promotion, and pontification took centre-stage in the public’s eyes, ears, and consciousness
instead.
Combined with the tumultuous US presidential and congressional elections in late 2024, the hope and hysteria around GenAI’s potential to ‘revolutionise’ banking (and commerce and society in general) diverted financial and fintech attention then - and even
more in the first half of 2025 - from all the advantages and productivity improvements ISO was expected to imminently bring to global businesses and supply chains.
As if the rapid rise of GenAI wasn’t enough, early in his second term in office President Trump’s tariff war captured the media’s attention and raised the concerns of many corporations and small businesses about higher costs and risks to sensitive supplier
and customer connections. But, ISO - and its promise to simplify and bring efficiency to commercial payment and trade transactions through a common, yet powerful set of new rules and structures to replace old, outdated SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Financial
Telecommunications) guidelines– never went away.
Broad improvements in efficiencies and communication are just the start – specific use cases abound
We’ve been
writing and talking about ISO compliance details, and deadlines in various Finextra articles for several years. We’ve also hosted dozens of webinars and
television interviews featuring or touching on the topic, sharing insights on its facts, features, and
expected benefits and timelines provided by scores of industry
experts.
ISO’s not new, but ‘quiet adoption’ offers more immediate benefits than most speculative endeavors
In fact, the new ISO standards for electronic data interchange between financial institutions have been quietly, and quite effectively, installed in a number of countries and payment networks over the past couple of years. This hasn’t generated much fanfare
amidst all the other noisy developments within the world of business and politics, but ISO is delivering on many of its promises now and is expected to really shake things up (in a good way) as SWIFT deadlines for all transactions to follow ISO’s new guidelines
kick in before year-end.
The ISO 20022 transition has been planned and a key priority for financial services and its participants for a long, long time. The Geneva, Switzerland-based
International Standards Organisation created and hosted an industry-led committee to develop and fine-tune it to replace a prior version, in 2013, but it has been talked about and tweaked withing international financial circles since 2004. There’s even
an ISO2002 for Dummies, provided compliments of SWIFT.
Practical efficiency and safety gains for banks, businesses, and everyone in the financial system
So, what is it? Well, as its number signifies, it was planned to be put into practice as an update in place of
ISO 15022, and it’s described by the standards body as “a common platform for the development of messages using: a modelling methodology to capture in a syntax-independent way financial business
areas, business transactions and associated message flows.”
What does it mean for financial institutions and businesses using its new format and structure? Simpler, better data, faster reconcilement, global standards that all can build communications, transactions, and reporting around. Quite simply, a better way
to do business and share details on critical information and financial dealings. And better fraud protection too.
ISO’s been a long time coming, so it’s a special shame that all of its benefits are being ‘lost in the shuffle’ of the latest acquisition announcements, AI speculation, and antagonism and angst brought on by constantly changing tariff threats in the centres
of international trade.
ISO 20022’s working now - accelerated implementations coming, voluntarily or by mandate in November
If your bank or your business aren’t already onboard with ISO 20022, it’s probably time for a second look and then a rapid plan of action to get there – certainly by SWIFT’s November deadline. The new standard’s emergence is being
celebrated right now by banks from
JP Morgan Chase to correspondents for smaller institutions like
South State,
credit unions, and systems
vendors like Finzly and
Bottomline. Network visionaries (like
FedNow and
The Clearing House in the US), and financial intermediaries like
Mastercard and
Visa have been analysing its impacts and mostly singing its (potential) praises for a while now.
In Finzly’s case, “every financial institution in its portfolio successfully completed ISO 20022 readiness testing” as of 10 July 2025. Booshan Rengachari, founder and CEO of Finzly
hailed the completion of its testing program with announcements on LinkedIn and in the wider press last week, noting, “What this milestone really shows is the trust banks place in us to handle the complexity, so they can stay focused on their customers.”
Whether you seek its practical and powerful (and more fraud-resistant) innovations for your customers, or you’re intrigued by its potential to increase efficiencies and tie all of those many loose ends of partnerships, supply chains, and general global commerce
together for your company, ISO 20022 will impact business in numerous, positive ways. It’s on track for global ‘stardom’ right now, though maybe not yet in the prime spotlight for most.
But while we’re waiting for the dust to clear from all the other distractions in the financial services marketplace, it’s high time to get some actual, productive business done – and with ISO 20022 adoption that’s likely to be business that’s vastly improved
beyond even last year’s standards and expectations. All while the latest “flashes in the pan” within the financial world may take years – if ever - to prove their worth.