ISO 20022: What Changes in International Payments and What Stays the Same for Your Company

If your company pays or receives money from abroad, your bank has probably already mentioned something called ISO 20022. The name is technical, but the change has a direct effect on the routine of anyone making international payments.

In this article, we explain what happened, what really changes and what stays exactly the same.

The news

Swift, the network that connects more than 11,000 financial institutions worldwide, has completed the migration of international payments to the ISO 20022 standard. On November 22, 2025, the period in which the old and new formats coexisted came to an end, and the new one became mandatory for payment instructions.

According to Swift itself, more than 98% of payment instructions are already sent in the new format.

What is ISO 20022, in plain language

Think of a payment message as a letter between banks. The old format was a short letter, with few fields and a lot of free text. ISO 20022 is a complete letter, with separate fields for each piece of information: who pays, who receives, address, purpose of the payment and invoice reference.

In other words, it is a common and more detailed language between banks. It is not a new route or a new payment method.

What improves

According to Swift, richer and more structured data helps institutions to:

Process more payments automatically, without manual intervention.
Improve analysis and compliance, with clearer information for verification.
Innovate, with a more flexible foundation for new services.

In practice, the expectation is fewer errors, fewer payments held up for review and more transparency for both sender and recipient.

What stays the same

ISO 20022 improves the message, but it does not change the path the money takes. A traditional international transfer can still pass through more than one bank, with a fee at each stop, banking hours and an exchange rate set by the institution.

According to a Capgemini study published by Exame, an international corporate payment takes 3.5 days on average to complete, and 74% of companies describe it as slow, expensive and unpredictable. In other words, the language is clearer, but the road is the same.

What about the deadline that was set for November?

A milestone had been planned for November 2026: removing free-text addresses and accepting only structured addresses. In August, Swift decided to extend this deadline at the request of the financial community, because large parts of the industry were still unable to meet the requirement. Swift said it will define the new timeline and provide an update by December at the latest.

In short: the new format is already the standard, but some details are still in transition.

What comes next

According to Swift, the new standard is the foundation for two initiatives. The first is a set of rules to ensure consistently fast, predictable and transparent retail cross-border payments. The second is a shared ledger based on blockchain, to enable the movement of digital value.

What your company can do now

Keep your records complete and consistent with your documents. Company name, address and supplier details must be correct and standardized.
Provide the purpose and the invoice reference. Clear data helps the payment go through without being held.
Check the beneficiary’s details before sending. A mistake can cause the payment to be returned.
Ask your bank whether there are changes to sending payments and what it now requires.

We hope you have learned about ISO 20022. If you want more efficiency in your global payments, with money arriving in minutes, click the card below and see our solutions.

Lexxen is a technology provider, and financial and virtual asset services are offered by authorized partner institutions. The other companies mentioned appear only as a news source, without any intention of monetization

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