What is ISO20022?

ISO20022 is a global messaging standard for communicating between companies that move money and banks. Most payment rails in the world are built around the ISO20022 standard.

ISO20022 is based on XML, which means it's a machine-readable format designed to be processed by program partially readable by humans.

Supported Payment Rails

Most major payment methods are based on ISO20022, including:

• SEPA
• SWIFT
• U.S. Real Time Payment
• U.S. Wire
• Many others

Some banking systems do not natively support ISO20022, like the U.S. ACH system, but many banks support it in their in-house systems.

Types of ISO20022 messages

There are many different types of ISO20022 messages, but for businesses that need to move money the most common types are:

• Payment Initiation (PAIN)

These are used for processing payment initiation files. You can see more about it here.

• Cash Management (CAMT)

These are used for receiving transaction and balance information. You can see more about it here.

Does my bank support ISO20022?

The capability to send and receive ISO20022 messages is a feature of most major banks. For example, banks in Europe are mandated to allow the import and export of ISO20022 messages.

To see if your bank supports ISO20022, visit SWIFT's Bank Readiness Programme.

How do I create an ISO20022 payment message?

You can use iso20022.js to create ISO20022 messages programatically. You can find a quickstart guide here.