ISO 20022 migration checkpoint
Check that you can place the migration milestones on the calendar — coexistence, the US high-value cut-overs, the end of cross-border MT, and the structured-address mandate — and reason about which rail a deadline applies to.
QUESTIONS AS TEXT
Q1. What does 'coexistence' mean in the ISO 20022 migration?
Answer: A: A period in which MT and ISO 20022 messages both travel the network, so a payment can be sent in one format and received in the other while institutions migrate.
Coexistence is the heart of a phased migration: for a defined window both MT and ISO 20022 are supported, so no one has to cut over on the same instant. For cross-border payments on SWIFT that window ran from March 2023 to November 2025.
Q2. Which of these correctly pairs a system with its ISO 20022 milestone?
Answer: A: The Fedwire Funds Service completed its ISO 20022 cut-over on 14 July 2025, and CHIPS migrated in 2024.
The domestic US high-value systems migrated on their own timelines, separate from the SWIFT cross-border programme: CHIPS in 2024 and the Fedwire Funds Service with a single-day cut-over on 14 July 2025. Keeping the dates attached to the right system is the whole skill of reading the timeline.
Q3. From 15 November 2026, what changes about postal addresses in in-scope cross-border payments, and where does most of the work fall?
Answer: A: A fully unstructured address is no longer permitted — a structured or hybrid address becomes mandatory — and most of the work falls in the customer channels that capture the address.
The address mandate is the most operationally disruptive remaining milestone because it reaches back into how data is captured. Structuring an address at the gateway is guesswork; structuring it at the point of entry is reliable — so the work lands in customer channels and host-to-host feeds, timed to that year's Standards Release.
Q4. Diagnose the situation and choose the sound conclusion.
Answer: A: Push back: November 2025 ended coexistence only for in-scope cross-border payment instructions on SWIFT. Other MT messages, including category 9xx statements, retire later, so a blanket decommission is premature.
The recurring trap is treating one rail's milestone as the whole migration. Cross-border payment instructions retired in November 2025, but statement and other MT messages run on separate schedules into 2027-2028. The right habit is to map each message flow to its own deadline before switching anything off.