Regulatory Upgrades

From November 2025, SWIFT will update its global messaging standards to align with ISO 20022.

This means that all banks, payment services providers (PSPs) and financial institutions will need to update their own messaging standards to align with ISO 20022 as well. The standard will need to be reflected across all messaging, regardless of the communication channel, and will include APIs.

One question you may ask is whether to upgrade your standards internally, or outsource your payment platform to a third party.

Outsourcing your payments programme may prove more time and cost-effective, giving you access to a robust, cloud-based payments server that comes with security, regulation and compliance build-in. These platforms are known as Payments as a Service (PaaS) and integrate directly into your payments programme to enable everything from Instant Payments to Open Banking.

The next generation of payments will be fully interoperable. With ISO 20022 and Open Banking allowing banks to send vast sums of data instantly and seamlessly, Instant Payments technology reducing reconciliation time to a matter of seconds, and new security features such as Confirmation of Payee, banks will be able to work faster – and smarter – than ever before.

However, meeting the expectations of Interoperable banking will require you to update or even replace legacy systems. Does your institution have the time and resources necessary to undertake a transformation of this magnitude?