ISO 20022

ISO 20022 (twenty-O-two-two) is the established global standard for payments messaging.  It creates a common language and model for payments data across the globe, which provides higher quality payment information as well as adapting to new needs and approaches.

ISO 20022 (twenty-O-two-two) brings the benefit of reducing multiple payment schemes and bank proprietary formats into a single, industry-wide standard by creating consistency and better-quality payment information.

To learn more about ISO 20022 deadlines, take a look at the ISO 20022 industry timeline.

Business, Commercial and Corporate customers that make/receive Sterling, Euro and cross border payments will be impacted along with Financial Institutions, Indirect Scheme Participants, Partner Banks, SWIFT Correspondent and SWIFT Corporate customers.

Faster Payments will be included in the Pay.UK Next Generation Programme (NGP), previously known as New Payment Architecture (NPA) migration to ISO 20022 (twenty-O-two-two) with dates to be confirmed by end of July 2025.

We’ll continue to keep you updated in ‘Watch this space’ above.

ISO 20022 introduces a wide range of data to be used in payment instructions not included in previous payment messages called “Enhanced Data”. Enhanced Data refers to additional information included in payment instructions to improve clarity and compliance.

Some of this new data is mandatory, starting with the introduction of Legal Entity Identifiers (LEIs) and Purpose Codes in CHAPS payments from 1 May 2025.

For more information on enhanced data including LEIs and Purpose Codes, take a look at our latest brochure in ‘Brochures, Factsheets and important information’ above.

Check out www.gleif.org/en for all things Legal Entity Identifiers (LEIs).

Bank of England define Financial Institutions (FIs) as PRA-authorised deposit-takers or broker-dealers, or Financial Market Infrastructures supervised by the Bank of England.

Check out the Bank of England website for all you need to know on purpose codes and the UK recommended list

NatWest offers a range of different services to indirect access customers dependent on customer needs. 

Select the channel(s) you use to serve your customers:

Bankline

Bankline Direct 

SWIFT

The Indirect Access team will keep you informed of relevant information specific to Indirect access. 

If you want to join our mailing list, please lets us know and we’ll add you to the list.

Banks involved in cross-border payments (CBPR+) need to get ready to support ISO 20022 payment and account information messages throughout the end-to-end value chain.

To meet this challenge, most banks will have to be ready to support ISO 20022 for CBPR+ although there is a co-existence period up until November 2025. This requires banks to assess and adjust the business processes used in payments.

It is likely that you’ll need to enhance your enterprises resource planning (ERP) or treasury management system (TMS).

We advise you to:

• Check whether adjustments to your ERP/ TMS system are necessary, e.g. to support richer ISO 20022 (twenty-O-two-two) payment information in the account statement and (auto-) reconciliation
• Prepare for providing structured name/address information of beneficiaries
• Switch to the newest Payment Initiation (pain) version and Cash Management (camt) message format early, if necessary
• Analyse whether a complete changeover to ISO 20022 format makes sense for your business

For SWIFT Corporate customers the migration of SWIFT messages to ISO 20022 is mandatory only in the interbank area and SWIFT will continue support of the FIN messages under the SCorE framework. However, this doesn’t mean all change can be avoided as the migration will influence corporates in the end-to-end flows.

If you have ISO 20022 Bankline related queries, please check out these FAQs

As part of a bank-wide update, you’ll notice the following changes with some of your payment advices:

• The ‘Your Reference’ field in the top right might have extra information, shown with a ‘+’ sign. If needed, this extra information can be found in the ‘Payment Details’ section of your advice.
• If you need to make changes to the address linked to your account, see How do I change my business address?
• The ‘Beneficiary account number’ now includes the full sort code and account number (not just the account number).
• The ‘Charge type’ will now be blank for some payments.
• The ‘Our Reference’ field will now include references starting ‘OPF,’ which helps us to identify a payment through bank systems.
• The ‘Beneficiary bank ID’ field will now include the Clearing System Identifier for some payments, such as ‘GBDSC,’ which helps to identify a UK domestic sort code.
• The 'Payment Details' field will no longer include reference to Purpose Code and E2E ID, such as PURP/XXXX/ROC/XXXXXXXXX. This data is available within the camt.054. 'Payment Details' will continue to display remittance information.
• The ‘Delivery Ref’ field will no longer show ‘991231’ at the start when a Sender BIC is available
• The Sender BIC hasn’t been removed - it'll still be shown where applicable.
• You’ll now see the BIC on its own, for example: BICXXXXXXXX.

If you have ISO 20022 Bankline Direct related questions, check out these FAQs

The 'Payment Details' field located in positions 23-26 might not include reference to codewords, such as Purpose Code and End to End ID e.g. PURP/XXXX/ROC/XXXXXXXXX. End to End ID is available within 'Related Reference' field (position 11) and 'Payment Details' will continue to display remittance information.

The narrative line field might not include reference to Purpose Code and E2E ID, such as PURP/XXXX/ROC/XXXXXXXXX. The narrative line will continue to display End to End ID End OR remittance information.

We no longer send MT103 for direct credits. Instead we’ll be sending an MT910. The differences you may notice are ‘Field 70’ might not include reference to Purpose Code and E2E ID, such as PURP/XXXX/ROC/XXXXXXXXX. Field 70 will continue to display remittance information.