ISO 20022 Is Taking Over - What You Need to Know Before November 2025

Summary

The financial messaging landscape is evolving rapidly. With the end of Swift’s coexistence phase in sight and new requirements emerging across Europe and beyond, it’s critical for corporates to stay compliant and competitive. Key changes include decommissioned MT messages, mandatory structured addresses and the introduction of Validation checks.

This update highlights what’s changing, how it affects your operations, and how to prepare —regardless of whether you’re already using Fides.

Overview of Key Changes and Recommendations

Payment Instruction Messages

• MT Decommissioning: Select MT messages, such as MT103, will be decommissioned in November 2025.
• Validation Checks: Swift is introducing validation checks to ensure complete data.
• MT101: No global decommission date yet, but support may decline after November 2026 due to mandatory structured address requirements.

Recommended Actions:

• Contact your banking partners to confirm their support timelines for MT101 and MT103.
• Start transitioning outgoing payments to the PAIN.001 format.
• For legacy MT103 payment flows, collaborate with Fides to switch to MT101 or directly to PAIN.001, or as a last resort, migrate to PACS.008. This will avoid the decommissioning of these flows starting November 2025 and ensure smooth interoperability with counterparties.

Account Reporting (MT940 / MT942)

• These messages are not officially sunset by Swift, but many banks are voluntarily retiring them.
• CAMT.053 / CAMT.052 are becoming the new standard.

Recommended Actions:

• Validate your bank’s roadmap for reporting formats.
• Review your internal systems’ ability to process CAMT messages.

Corporate-to-Bank Messaging (SCORE / Corporate BICs)

• MT messages remain supported for SCORE.
• FINplus / SCORE+ is available for ISO 20022 messaging since November 2024.

Recommended Actions:

• If you’re interested in moving to SCORE+, contact Fides for setup support.

Additional Market Developments

• Structured addressing becomes mandatory for most Payment Market Infrastructures (PMIs) by November 2026.
• German banks are planning to phase out MT101 and MT940/942 across all channels (Swift, EBICS, H2H).
• Regulatory trends like Verification of Payee and structured remittance fields are becoming more prevalent.

Our Advice

To stay ahead of market changes, we recommend migrating all payments and reporting to XML (ISO 20022) formats. This not only ensures regulatory and market alignment but also:

• Unlocks richer data to support automation,
• Enables end-to-end reconciliation,
• Reduces long-term costs associated with maintaining legacy formats.

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Fides is the world leader in multibank connectivity, payments and transaction communications. A market leader for more than a century, Fides is committed to the principles of Open Banking, making treasury and financial operations as efficient, transparent and secure as possible for all organizations.

Fides provides everything organizations need for efficient cash and liquidity management, all through a single platform — along with connectivity to more than 13,000 financial institutions through an unmatched range of methods and channels. Thousands of companies around the globe rely on Fides’ connectivity capabilities and comprehensive workflow, reporting, conversion, validation and security services, for their own businesses and for extending services to their clients.

Whether you access via the secure Fides ONEHub or take advantage of our seamless integration with third-party ERP, TMS and other backend systems, Fides is the only platform you need.