SWIFT has launched a major consultation on the future migration of its cross-border messaging services to the ISO 20022 standard.

Payment messages have always been at the heart of SWIFT and still account for some 50% of total traffic on the network. In recent years a number of new market infrastructures for payments have come onstream, and all of them are based on ISO 20022 messages rather than the older ISO 15022 based ‘MT’ standard. Over the next few years several more implementations are scheduled.

According to SWIFT, banks are increasingly interested in migrating the bilateral messaging traffic as well.

The formal consultation will run until early June, and a final report is expected by the end of 2018.

Harry Newman, head, banking, Swift, says: “ISO 20022 will deliver increased efficiencies, end-to-end STP, improved regulatory compliance, enhanced party identifications, and will enable new business opportunities in line with the gpi roadmap.”