SWIFT has responded to the lack of readiness in the market and amended the previous roadmap for the ISO 20022 Standards Release 2026. The payments changes scheduled for mid-November have been postponed for the time being; this also means the previous deadline for the mandatory phasing out of completely unstructured addresses no longer applies. No new date has yet been set. SWIFT intends to consult banks, central banks, market infrastructures, Market Practice Groups and corporates in the coming weeks and provide information on the next steps by December at the latest.
The decision has therefore been taken just around two and a half months before the originally planned go-live date.
However, this does not mean that transitions to structured addresses that have already taken place are now pointless – SWIFT is expressly urging banks and market infrastructures to continue pushing ahead with the introduction. Rather, a need for short-term adjustments may arise where institutions have already fully adapted their processing to structured addresses: incoming payments may now contain fully unstructured address data for longer than previously planned.
Initial assessment of the implications
From a payments perspective, the key factor now is likely to be how the market infrastructures closely integrated with CBPR+ respond. DPS Partner Carsten Lange and Tobias Münsterberg, Manager at DPS, highlight TARGET2, SEPA and SIX Clearing in particular: it remains to be seen in the coming days whether and how the respective November changes will be adapted to the new SWIFT roadmap. Different timetables could create additional complexity – for example, if incoming CBPR+ payments and the subsequent SEPA processing are subject to different requirements regarding address data.
According to current market reports, this was apparently not due to a lack of readiness on the part of the German-speaking or European market. SWIFT itself points to inconsistent levels of preparation worldwide and to the fact that large parts of the industry across all regions are not yet able to meet the requirements.
Exceptions & Investigations (E&I) are also affected by the rescheduling. The investigation messages camt.110 and camt.111 are not payment messages and, according to initial classification, therefore fall under the other areas dealt with separately by SWIFT. E&I expert Tobias Münsterberg therefore expects the next E&I phase involving camt.110 and camt.111 to be postponed until the first quarter of 2027.
Possible delays in T+1 projects
The decision also has implications for the capital markets sector. “The adjustments, which are independent of the structured address and relate to the major T+1 project, will also be postponed until the first quarter of 2027,” says Ulrike Uitz, Partner at DPS. This could lead to delays in ongoing projects that had previously assumed the new structures would be available from November 2026.
It is therefore likely that the full extent of the decision’s impact will only become clearer in the coming days. In particular, the reactions of the other market infrastructures will show whether the November releases, which have so far been closely coordinated, will remain synchronised. SWIFT intends to present a new roadmap for structured addresses by December at the latest.
