Australian Payments Network (AusPayNet) has successfully adopted the ISO 20022 message standard. Coordinated by Australian Payments Network, the ISO 20022 migration is the culmination of four years of collaboration between regulators and participants in the Australian payments industry and has been completed in alignment with the global upgrade of the cross-border payments system coordinated by Swift.

Better payments data With ISO 20022 payment messages will be able to carry richer, more enhanced, and structured data, and the migration will lead to significant improvements to process-automation, interoperability, and corporate customer experience in Australian payments. Among other benefits, the new messaging standard will allow more structured remittance information and identification of parties in the payments chain, aiding know-your-customer, anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing efforts, and sanctions-screening. Financial institutions will be able to create seamless experiences for corporate customers and ultimately deliver faster, cheaper, transparent, and more accessible payments.

How the migration came to fruition Commencing with a consultation process facilitated by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) in 2019, the migration process has since featured extensive collaboration between 50 HVCS participant financial institutions in building, testing, and implementing key aspects of the new messaging standard in Australia. The RBA recommended that AusPayNet coordinate the migration to ISO 20022 following its consultation period. AusPayNet’s stated that the migration has been one of the largest and complex programme of work AusPayNet has undertaken to date in-house, demonstrating the organisation’s capability to undertake similar scale initiatives for the payments industry in future.

Representatives from Swift commented that financial institutions and infrastructures around the world have embraced ISO 20022 for its potential to unlock significant new opportunities in both payments processing and service innovation. AusPayNet’s successful migration puts Australia at the forefront of realising those possibilities. .