The Bank of England, working closely with the payments industry, has today successfully migrated CHAPS, the UK’s high-value payments system, to ISO 20022 – the latest global financial messaging standard. This marks a significant milestone in the multi-year programme to renew the Bank’s Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) service: a programme whose objectives are to increase resilience, competition and innovation within the payments landscape.

It also marks a key milestone in the global transition of payments to ISO 20022. The ISO 20022 standard allows more data to be sent with payments, and in a more structured format. ISO 20022 is an open international standard, which has the potential to create a single common language for most payments globally and deliver a wide range of benefits. In addition to the UK, many major jurisdictions have or are intending to implement ISO 20022 by November 2025, when SWIFT is scheduled to retire its existing MT message standard for cross-border payments. Pay.UK’s New Payments Architecture, which will replace the UK’s Faster Payments system in due course, will also use ISO 20022.

ISO 20022 delivers a wide range of benefits to individual institutions and, through greater global harmonisation, enhances cross border payments. The key benefits include:

Consumers and businesses are unlikely to need to change the way they send CHAPS or cross-border payments for now. However, they might start to see options to add further information or specific references (such as invoice numbers) with CHAPS payments towards the end of this year. We encourage consumers and business to contact their bank, building society or payment service provider if they have any queries.

Executive Director of Payments Victoria Cleland said: “The introduction of the ISO 20022 financial messaging standard marks a major milestone in our mission to enhance our RTGS and CHAPS services: critical infrastructure at the heart of the financial system.

“In an increasingly globalised payments world, harmonisation of messaging through ISO 20022 will enable more systems to speak the same language and ultimately enhance cross border payments. The move to ISO 20022 is a key element in the Bank’s RTGS Renewal Programme and meets one of our commitments to the Financial Stability Board’s Roadmap to Enhance Cross Border Payments.

“ISO 20022 also provides great benefits for individual firms: I would encourage them all to embrace these benefits.

“I am very grateful to the teams in the Bank, to Accenture (our Technology Delivery Partner) and also to our CHAPS Direct Participants and the broader payments industry whose strong collaboration and commitment has made this transformational change possible.”

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