ISO 20022 Adoption and Migration for Cross-Border Payments and Reporting Plus

CBPR+ is a SWIFT program for adopting ISO 20022 for cross border payment and reporting messages in the correspondent banking space. The use of ISO 20022 messages in SWIFT cross-border payments started in March 2023 with a coexistence phase up to November 2025, where the old MT messages for cross-border payments and cash reporting will be replaced.

What is ISO 20022?

ISO 20022 is an open international data standard defined as part of the Cross-border Payments and Reporting Plus (CBPR+) specification. It is being adopted around the world for domestic batch and instant payment systems, and will be adopted for high value RTGS and Euro1.

Migration from MT Format to ISO 20022 Standard (MX type)

Swift introduced ISO 20022 in March 2023. Today, Financial Institutions are able to receive ISO 20022 payment messages. As of November 2025, all messages, both sending and receiving must be based on ISO 20022, but until then Financial Institutions are still allowed to send current MT messages. This transition period is meant for FI’s to be able to gradually adapt to the new standards.

What do I need to do as a corporate?

Although the current scope of the ISO 20022 change is focused on Financial Institutions, also Corporates most likely will have to change their ERP/TMS systems, to be able to process richer and structured name/address information of beneficiaries and fill in additional mandatory fields in the future.

What SWIFT MT messages are in March 2023 scope for the ISO 20022 migration at UBAF?

The stages of the CBPR+ project at UBAF