ISO 20022

ISO 20022 is an established global standard for payments messaging. It creates a common language and model for payments data across the globe, providing higher quality payment information than other standards as well as adapting to new needs and approaches.

ISO 20022 brings the benefit of reducing multiple payment schemes and bank formats into a single, industry-wide standard, creating consistency and a better quality of payment information. 

To learn about the industry timeline for the ISO 20022 migration take a look at our ISO 20022 industry timeline.

To better understand how to translate data to the ISO 20022 standard, you can find out more about mapping MT to MX, ISO 20022 and XML by visiting SWIFT.

For Faster Payments sent via SWIFTNet FIN, the MT format will eventually migrate to MX.  We’ll let you know when these changes will be happening.

Faster Payments will also be included in the Pay.UK NPA migration to ISO 20022, but we currently don’t have dates when this will happen.

As part of a bank-wide update, you’ll notice the following changes with some of your payment advices.

The ‘Your Reference’ field in the top right might have extra information, shown with a ‘+’ sign. If needed, this extra information can be found in the ‘Payment Details’ section of your advice.

You address will be included on the top left corner of your advice. If you need to make changes to the address linked to your account, see How do I change my business address?

The ‘Beneficiary account number’ now includes the full sort code and account number (not just the account number).

The ‘Charge type’ will now be blank for some payments.

The ‘Our Reference’ field will now include references starting ‘OPF’, which helps us to identify a payment through bank systems.

The ‘Beneficiary bank ID’ field will now include the Clearing System Identifier for some payments, such as ‘GBDSC’, which helps to identify a UK domestic sort code. 

Business, Commercial and Corporate customers that make/receive Sterling, Euro and cross border payments will be impacted along with Financial Institutions, Indirect Scheme Participants, Partner Banks, SWIFT Correspondent and SWIFT Corporate customers.

For customers whose internal back end systems link to NatWest Group systems or they submit traffic on a direct basis, changes will need to be made to ensure ISO 20022 formatted messages can be sent/received and processed correctly.

Banks and other payment service providers participating in Market Infrastructures must get ready to support ISO 20022 payment and account information messages throughout the end-to-end value chain.

To meet this challenge, most banks will have to be ready to support ISO 20022 for HVPS+ applicable to the respective Market Infrastructure. This requires banks to assess and decide on their clearing connectivity options and potentially adjust the business processes used in payments.

Banks involved in cross-border payments need to get ready to support ISO 20022 payment and account information messages throughout the end-to-end value chain. To meet this challenge, most banks will have to be ready to support ISO 20022 for CBPR+ from March 2023. This requires banks to assess and adjust the business processes used in payments.

It is likely that you will need to enhance your enterprises resource planning (ERP) or treasury management system (TMS).

Corporates are advised to:

• Check whether adjustments to the ERP/ TMS system are necessary, e.g. to support richer ISO 20022 payment information in the account statement and (auto-) reconciliation
• Prepare for providing structured name/address information of beneficiaries
• Switch to the newest Payment Initiation (pain.) version and Cash Management (camt.) message format early, if necessary
• Analyze whether a complete changeover to the ISO 20022 format makes sense for the organization.

For SWIFT Corporate customers the migration of SWIFT messages to ISO 20022 is mandatory only in the interbank area and SWIFT will continue support of the FIN messages under the SCorE framework. However, this does not mean that all change can be avoided as the migration will have an effect on corporates in the end-to-end flows. For example, the mandatory use of structured party information is scheduled – something corporates should not ignore.

What’s Next:

The next change is to CHAPS payments in Bankline, and it’s planned to arrive in Q1 2025. When it’s introduced, you’ll see some new payment information fields appear for CHAPS payments. For most CHAPS payments these will be optional, but for certain payments you’ll need to use the new fields to enter some additional info. For example, from May 2025 certain property transactions will need the addition of a purpose code.

When the changes are live, you’ll see messaging on the relevant payment/importing screens on Bankline.

Importing CHAPs payments into Bankline using ISO2022 XML Pain001.001.09

To help you prepare for any changes you may need to make to your import files with your software provider in Q1 2025, we have created an updated XML Pain.001.001.09 Guide

 Please note:

• This version is NOT LIVE and files that meet these specifications will be rejected from Bankline until Q1 2025.
• This guide is a work-in-progress version to help scope out changes only, it is subject to change and updates.
• If you are looking to adopt XML for the first time we suggest you build to this future version rather than the current March 2024 version

Download Importing Guide XML Pain.001.001.09 (N.B. valid for live payments from Q1 2025 – exact date to be confirmed)

If you are using a different importing format than XML, please see the  Bankline ISO 20022 Frequently Asked Questions for further updates.

Bankline ISO20022 Changes now live

March 2024: no changes will be mandated for SEPA payments. An updated version of XML importing code has been introduced. For support please see the Importing Guide XML – Pain 001.001.009

If you are looking to adopt XML for the first time it might be prudent to wait and adopt the latest version being introduced for Q1 2025 – you can access a draft of that version above. 

If you have ISO 20022 Bankline Direct related ISO 20022 questions, check out these FAQs