(16 July 2025 – Global) All banks must be ready to support the new ISO 20022 flexible standard for financial messages language to continue processing payments as HSBC cautions customers must also prepare for changes.
With under six months to go until the ISO20022 November 2025 CBPR+ deadline, the new Swift payments messaging standard enables interoperability between financial institutions, market infrastructures and the Banks’ customers. The ISO 20022 standard supports the inclusion of richer, better structured transaction data in payments messages, and aims to deliver a better customer experience by enabling less manual intervention, more accurate compliance processes, higher resilience, and improved fraud prevention measures.
Common adoption strategies are “like for like”, where the message format will be replaced from MT to ISO 20022 XML format that has comparable elements and character lengths to the existing SWIFT MT messages, and “full/enhanced ISO” where additional and enhanced existing elements are available. In order to ensure consistent usage and inter-operability, guidelines are defined by the industry.
“A huge milestone achieved for the US and the global ISO 20022 migration. Thank you to the HSBC team for executing such a smooth transition and to the wider banking community in the US for coming together to plan, test, and ultimately deliver one of the largest RTGS migrations to date” commented HSBC Global Head of Currency Clearing, Tom Simpson.
“Congratulations to the HSBC team and the US banking community on the successful Fedwire ISO20022 migration on July 14. A major milestone in modernising US payment infrastructure. The shift to ISO20022 isn’t just a tech upgrade, it’s a transformative leap enabling richer data, improved straight-through processing, and greater interoperability. Migrating the Fedwire system was highly complex, and the HSBC team’s dedication, testing and planning ensured a smooth transition while enabling the future of payments” commented HSBC Regional Head of North America Global Solutions, Tom Halpin.
“As we move toward CBPR+ and Swift milestones in the coming months and years, this transformation will unlock opportunities for enhanced client experiences, advanced analytics, and innovative payment solutions. Most importantly, this positions HSBC to deliver even more value through better data, transparency, and faster processing. Thank you to all the teams involved across HSBC in the US and globally for making this happen. The world is watching, and HSBC is committed to successful modernisation” Halpin added.
HSBC is actively involved with Swift and the different market infrastructures that are migrating towards ISO. HSBC has successfully enabled its global network to receive and forward Swift CBPR+ messages in all of its 50 plus locations and to exchange ISO messages in the newly migrated domestic markets. HSBC will align he bank with market requirements and delivery timelines set by different market infrastructures and ensure the group is well placed to comply with the adoption strategies set forth by the market infrastructure.