Westpac New Zealand has deployed a solution from Finastra to accelerate its compliance with the new ISO 20022 financial messaging standard. The approach allowed the bank to make use of the benefits of ISO 20022's data-rich MX messaging format while maintaining backward compatibility with previous messaging formats without having to modernise the whole payments network.

Finastra's Fusion Global PAYplus payment system is 'ISO' native and can facilitate conversion to the ISO 20222 standard. It provides MT to MX conversion, which converts SWIFT MT communications into ISO 20022-compliant XML-based message formats and vice versa. In straight-through processing and access to insights via payment analytics, the platform fully uses the richness of data.

Fusion Global PAYplus features built-in transformer mechanisms that have proved to speed integration with other essential partner systems inside banks, such as compliance systems and core banking. Finastra has a track record of deploying ISO 20022 payments systems throughout the world, and it is collaborating closely with its clients to allow them to handle cross-border and domestic real-time gross settlement systems (RTGS) in numerous important markets that have either migrated or are planning to migrate to the standard. More details about ISO 20022 ISO 20022 is a global standard for the transmission of financial signals such as payments.

It provides benefits such as increased interoperability among financial systems, improved straight-through processing, and improved data quality. ISO 20022 offers the opportunity for improved efficiency and transparency, quicker and more cost-effective transactions, and new services and business models like real-time payments and better fraud detection to banks and their clients. This movement, while significant, is only the beginning of the journey.

The magnitude of the change is such that there will be a transition period for Swift users between the old ISO 15022 standard and the new ISO 20022 standard, with the expectation that ISO 15022 will be phased out by November 2024 for domestic payments and November 2025 for cross-border payments. Adopting ISO 20022 as both a message format and a data model can result in far-reaching advantages for an organisation's API investment, as institutions employ the technology to provide value to clients. This involves improving consumer experiences, generating new goods and services quickly, and establishing beneficial industry partnerships, all of which create income prospects.

Westpac transformation path Westpac New Zealand's first-half profit is down by a third from 2022, due to lower income and more expenditures, as well as provisions for bad loans. Despite being able to charge clients larger margins in the six months to the end of March compared to the same six-month period the previous year, earnings fell. The announcement comes after Westpac accelerated the pace of digitalisation in its retail banking sector during the 2020/21 fiscal year, eliminating a big number of branches and doing more business online, reducing the number of New Zealand branch locations by 18, to 116.

As a result, if data truly is the new oil, ISO 20022 may be viewed as a significant new payment deposit. Its precise outlines are still unknown, but it is expected to open up several new options for payment players and the clients they service. .