20022 Labs Launched by Payments Canada

At the 2019 Payments Canada SUMMIT, 20022 Labs, a new global payments lab based in Canada, unveiled plans to help the world realize better economic efficiency, interoperability, convenience and prosperity through ubiquitous, data-enriched payments. The not-for-profit organization will provide consulting, education, research and ‘sandbox’ services focused squarely on the promotion, adoption and maximized use of the ISO 20022 payment message standard.

“We’re energized by the enthusiasm we are receiving,” said 20022 Labs Founder, Mike Sigal. “The market, both in Canada and globally, clearly wants to get going with ISO 20022, but it’s just not quite sure how to move forward. That’s where we come in.”

The cornerstone of the lab will be a collection of payment rails and applications for experimentation, testing and development by corporates, banks, fintechs, financial market infrastructures, developers, and any organization that stands to benefit from payments carrying more data. The organization is in discussions with a number of partners which includes Trace Financial and their Transformer product to deliver added-value tools and resources to 20022 Labs participants.

“The world has an abundance of Fintech innovation initiatives, but frankly, none are doing as important, targeted and collaborative work on the future of data and payments as 20022 Labs. IBM is excited for the payments industry and to help 20022 Labs create a new payments ecosystem that encourages collaboration between fintechs, financial institutions and corporations,” said Mike Cook, Managing Partner Financial Services, IBM Canada GBS.

While the benefits of ISO 20022 will appeal to almost every sector of the economy, the first experiments in the lab will focus on specific use cases within the Insurance industry, working directly with a group of leading Canadian insurers and the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association (CLHIA). “ISO-enabled payments will bring significant benefit to insurers through richer payments data and operational efficiencies, and to consumers through a better payments experience, said Stephen Frank, President and CEO, CLHIA. “20022 Labs is a place for interested parties to come together to collaborate and to demonstrate the benefits ISO 20022 can bring to Canada.”

“While ISO 20022 has emerged as the future global payment message standard, it has been slow to gain traction due to the complexity of the market equation,” said Payments Canada CEO, Gerry Gaetz. “Our commitment to ISO 20022 is unwavering, and Payments Canada, along with many of our peers around the world, are thrilled to see broad enthusiasm in the ecosystem for 20022 Labs that matches ours and our members.”

“The 20022 Labs is a very exciting initiative from Payments Canada and we are proud to be able to participate in this to help enable their participants to migrate to ISO 20022” said Paul Ruskin, Director of Business Development at Trace Financial.  “We intend to support this initiative as much as we can and have already offered the particpants of this scheme access to the many articles we have written on the migration to ISO 20022 as well as access to the many resources on our website that uses Transformer to validate and transform any SWIFT MT message and also the ability to translate this type to and from ISO 20022”.