Canada’s Lynx was set to go live with its second release this month, introducing ISO 20022. However, while the technology needed to support the release will still be deployed as planned, it will not be activated until next March.

Payments Canada’s decision to delay comes after consultation with Lynx users in order to align with Swift’s ISO 20022 migration for cross-border payments and reporting (CBPR+) - which was itself recently put back from November to March.

Swift made its move in response to the ECB’s decision to delay the launch of the Eurosystem’s new real-time gross settlement system and central liquidity management model, T2 - which is based around the use of the new messaging standard - from November to March in order to give some member states more time for testing.

Last month, Payments Canada was forced to delay the launch of another if its flagship projects - the Real-Time Rail payments system - from the middle of next year to an as yet undetermined date.