Not All Vendors Are ISO 20022-Ready, So How Do You Find the Right One?

In our second blog, we touched on the tension many institutions face, between wanting to get migration done and dealing with limited resources. Some banks choose to implement just enough to stay compliant. Others jump in too quickly without a full understanding of what’s required. Both scenarios create risks.

On one hand, a minimal approach can delay access to improved automation and analytics. On the other, an accelerated roll-out without the right architecture can result in rising technical debt.

That’s why vendor selection, operational planning, and internal coordination all need to happen in parallel. Migration is not the finish line, it’s the start of a much larger journey. It lies in identifying the right technology and support, because picking the wrong vendor, or relying on minimal updates, can leave your systems strained and your operations exposed.

Let’s dig into what banks should be thinking about as they look beyond migration deadlines and start laying the groundwork for a better and more sustainable operation.

Not all ISO ready vendors are equally prepared

It’s tempting to assume that any provider promising ISO 20022 compliance is fit for the job. But what works for one organisation may not hold up for another.

In fact, one of the most overlooked aspects of this migration is that ISO 20022 doesn’t arrive as a one-size-fits-all format. Even with SWIFT’s CBPR+ guidelines aiming to standardise cross-border messaging, there are still many local flavours of implementation, with market infrastructures in Europe, Australia, and Southeast Asia each introducing their own requirements.

That means your technology partner needs more than just a checkbox for compliance. They need experience in handling market-specific variations, maintaining message integrity across formats, and providing updates that keep pace with evolving requirements.

Many vendors also underdeliver on integration support. In an ideal world, ISO 20022 messages should flow smoothly across your risk, treasury, and customer systems, but this rarely happens without detailed mapping, interface customisation, and constant testing. If the vendor can’t support these linkages, your project is likely to face delays, errors, and rising internal costs.

Your infrastructure needs to do more than just translate messages

It’s one thing to install a converter that can translate MT to MX messages. It’s another to ensure your downstream systems can work with that data in a meaningful way.

A Deloitte report found that just 56% of U.S. banks expected to be ready by November 2025 for ISO 20022 adoption. That statistic highlights a significant readiness gap, not just in supporting the format switch from MT to MX, but in aligning internal architecture, message management, and business processes to handle the richer data the new standard brings.

It underlines the point: meeting a deadline isn’t enough, real value comes from shaping systems and teams to use the data that flows through them effectively.

For example, without the right infrastructure, automated reconciliation, the ability to match payments with invoices in real time, becomes difficult to scale. That creates more room for delays, errors, and manual intervention. And when you consider how important speed and precision are in real-time payments, those gaps matter.

This is why ISO 20022 is better viewed as an operational rethink, not just a compliance milestone.

Small issues during migration can become big problems in production

Throughout this series, we’ve highlighted that message formatting errors can cause transaction delays, misreporting, or even compliance violations. What’s often underestimated is how small these errors can be, an extra space, a missing code, or an outdated data field can cause entire payments to fail.

According to a joint statement by SWIFT and several central banks, as systems shift into production, the frequency of formatting-related rejections is expected to rise. Institutions will need a clear validation process in place, not just before go-live, but ongoing, especially as updates are made to the messaging schema.

This is where testing environments, real-time monitoring, and fallback plans make all the difference. Banks that treat this as a one-and-done exercise are likely to find themselves doing damage control when transactions don’t behave as expected.

ISO 20022 is not just about compliance, it’s about capability

We’ll touch lightly on some of the themes from our whitepaper, which explores how richer data, automation, and better interoperability can improve day-to-day efficiency and customer outcomes, not just technical compliance. These aren’t theoretical advantages. EY’s Supercharge your payments business with ISO 20022 report highlights those early adopters have already seen results, higher STP rates, fewer exceptions, and more efficient reconciliation, all made possible by the additional data fields ISO 20022 enables.

What to expect next

In the final blog of this series, we’ll pull together the full picture, from the urgency of ISO 20022’s adoption and the challenges along the way, to how it can be used to create lasting operational value.

As we've seen throughout this series, getting ISO 20022 right means asking better questions: not just “how fast can we get there?” but “how can we make it work for us?”

For now, we encourage institutions to rethink migration as a larger business improvement exercise, not just a switch in message format. The right partner can help you move faster. But the right approach will help you move smarter.

If you’re looking for more practical advice and technical guidance, our full white paper breaks down each step of the ISO 20022 journey.