What is ISO 20022?

Definition

ISO 20022 is an international financial messaging standard published by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO). It defines a common XML syntax and a universal financial data dictionary for exchanges between financial institutions, between banks and businesses, and between payment systems.

Its full name is "Financial services — Universal financial industry message scheme". It is sometimes referred to by its acronym UNIFI (UNIversal Financial Industry message scheme).

Why it matters

Before ISO 20022, each country, each payment network and often each bank used its own proprietary format for financial messages: SWIFT MT (formats 103, 940, 950...), Swiss DTA, European EDIFACT, American NACHA, etc. This heterogeneity was complex and costly for businesses operating internationally.

ISO 20022 unifies these formats with:

• A common data model (dictionary of financial concepts)
• A structured XML syntax, machine-readable
• A message catalogue covering all transaction types (payments, statements, securities, foreign exchange, etc.)

The main messages

For a Swiss SME, the most common ISO 20022 messages are:

The Swiss migration

Switzerland completed a full migration to ISO 20022 under the coordination of SIX Group:

• DTA (Datenträgeraustausch) → replaced by pain.001 for credit transfer orders
• ESR (orange payment slip) → replaced by the QR-bill (whose payment format is defined in the SPS standard, the Swiss implementation of ISO 20022)
• MT940 (SWIFT statement) → replaced by camt.053

The migration was completed during 2022, making Switzerland one of the first countries to have entirely abandoned legacy proprietary formats.

Global context

ISO 20022 is establishing itself as the dominant standard for modern interbank payments. SWIFT migrated its cross-border interbank messages to ISO 20022 (MX format) in 2025. The EU adopted it for SEPA (SEPA credit transfers in XML pain.001). Real-time settlement systems (TIPS in Europe, SIC in Switzerland) are all built on ISO 20022.

How Neoffice implements it

Neoffice natively generates pain.001 files for supplier payments (submitted to the bank via e-banking or EBICS). It imports and processes camt.053 and camt.054 files for automatic bank reconciliation. All these exchanges comply with the Swiss Payment Standards (SPS) published by SIX Group.