Swift has agreed to give the financial industry more time to complete a key part of the ISO 20022 payments upgrade: the shift from free-text postal addresses to structured ones.
The decision follows formal requests from several market communities that said they could not meet the original November 2026 deadline. Structured address data is widely seen as essential for the next phase of cross-border payments.
It supports higher automation, more reliable compliance checks, and clearer information for customers.
Swift has long backed ISO 20022 as the standard that will deliver those gains.
After last year’s move away from the older MT format, more than 98 percent of payment instructions now travel in ISO 20022, giving the industry a solid base to build on.
The community agreed on the structured-address requirement in 2023 and scheduled it for Standards Release 2026.
That annual update covers formats and rules across payments, securities, trade and other message types.
Swift had monitored readiness and engaged with users for years. As the November cut-over drew closer, however, progress proved uneven.
Large parts of the industry in every region still could not comply.
Several groups therefore asked both Swift and their domestic payment market infrastructures—many of which had matching deadlines—for extra time.
After consulting those infrastructures, Swift accepted the request and will now apply a controlled delay to Standards Release 2026.In practice, all payments-related changes will be postponed.
Over the coming weeks, Swift will consult banks, central banks, payment market infrastructures, market-practice groups and corporates to settle the best new timetable and method for the address rules.
An update is due by December at the latest, as part of Swift’s normal governance process.
Other payments changes planned for November will be introduced on a separate schedule; the latest information is available on swift.com.
Changes that sit outside payments will move on a different track.
Standards Release 2026 also contains updates that support important business and regulatory goals, including the shift to T+1 settlement in certain markets.
We are separating those items so they can advance more quickly.
They are now expected to go live in the first quarter of 2027, with a precise date to be confirmed by mid-September after further discussion with the relevant stakeholders.
The split lets securities and trade work continue while giving the payments community the extra time it requested. Swift still urges institutions that have already upgraded to keep using structured addresses.
Those messages travel without friction across the network, so early adopters can capture operational benefits today. Domestic market infrastructures and banks are also encouraged to press ahead, because local adoption of structured addresses is a vital building block for smoother cross-border flows.