Blockchain Impacts – Understanding ISO 20022

Most people have never heard of SWIFT, nor do they have any idea of how money have moved around the globe for the past 40+ years. Regardless of catching up to speed now, the world of international payments is about to receive a major overhaul. There is a massive amount of information regarding this standard and by 2025, all financial institutions will have to be able to process ISO 20022 compliant payments. The five business domains that ISO 20022 covers are: payments, securities, cards and related retail financial services, FX (foreign exchange), and trade services.

The new standard, currently in an opt-in phase, will allow for open and transparent messaging between financial institutions around the globe. Within the new syntax-rich messaging system is a central repository containing the information necessary to support the various APIs.

In order to move the current financial messaging system from the existing legacy system, a team of dedicated professionals work to support the migration to the new system. This is a delicate transfer and must be performed with diligence, since not all institutions are migrating at the same time.

Putting it simply, all major currencies that exist have already adopted ISO 20022 or have a migration plan to adopt. The reason, in a nutshell, is the improved efficiency that this standard provides. End-to-end processing of payments messaging are streamlined, and delivery is straight forward. SWIFT MT has been the legacy system enabling payments to move around the globe since the 1970s. This will no longer be the case.

Interesting information about ISO 20022 can be found on the Payments Standards Evaluation Group page on the ISO 20022 website. Under the list of EXPERTS, two of the member entities listed in the column dominated by countries are in fact, not countries. These two member entities are SWIFT, the current legacy payments system, as well as Ripple. Ripple is a US based company deeply engrained in the development of RTGS (real-time gross settlement) digital ledger technology. Ripple is also embattled in a lawsuit that was brought on by the US Securities Exchange Commission in December of 2020. SWIFT is a registered expert on the list of all business domain experts while Ripple is on the list for payments.

If you are interested in the payments portion of the ISO 20022 standard, research ISO 20022 compliant digital assets. Any financial institutions that are processing payments on the SWIFT MT network will be switched over to the ISO 20022 standard by November 2022.

To understand the standard more intimately, I suggest viewing the standards website for the most specific information.

Best,

Rand

This is not investment advice. I am not an investment advisor. This is for informational and entertainment purposes. Consult an investment advisor.