Lowering costs through improved reconciliation.More stringent anti-money-laundering checks and other financial crime prevention measures.The potential for this richer data to transform business models and operations is virtually limitless. The format will allow, for the first time, rich business data to travel alongside a payment, end-to-end from the originator to the beneficiary systems. We can see why by looking at the ISO 20022 message format, which neatly encapsulates the high-level impact of the new standard.

Inside that complexity lie some operational hurdles for payments players-but also tremendous opportunities. There’s no two ways about it: ISO 20022 is a complex new standard for financial services firms of every description.