Media Release Consultation on ISO 20022 Migration for the Australian Payments System

The Reserve Bank and the Australian Payments Council (APC) today issued a consultation paper seeking stakeholder views on the migration of messaging used in some parts of the Australian payments system to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 20022 payments messaging standard.

The Australian payments system comprises a number of payment services, clearing systems and settlement systems. Some of these services and systems use the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) Message Type (MT) for messages used in trading, clearing, settlement and payments, including for the Reserve Bank's real-time gross settlement system.

Recently, SWIFT announced plans to cease ongoing support of some MT messages used for cross-border payments after November 2025 and migrate them to the ISO 20022 standard. SWIFT's end goal is to fully migrate all payments and reporting traffic to ISO 20022, allowing the community to use the same standard for all payments flows.

A number of key financial market infrastructures world-wide already have projects underway to develop and adopt ISO 20022 messaging over the next five years.

The Reserve Bank and APC believe that it is an appropriate time to consider adoption of the ISO 20022 standard and are undertaking this consultation to assist the industry in coming to agreement on key strategic decisions for an ISO 20022 migration project. The aim is for this project to be complete by the end of 2024, ahead of the completion of SWIFT's cross-border payments migration and in line with international migrations.

The Reserve Bank and APC invite interested parties to provide their views in writing by 31 May 2019. Please submit responses using the consultation Response Template provided.

The APC was formed in 2014 as the strategic coordination body for the Australian payments industry. The APC's role is to help ensure the Australian payments system continues to meet changing customer needs with innovative, secure and competitive payment services. Further information on the APC is available here.