ISO 20022 migration: what changed in international transfers and what data banks now require

A cross-border payment can be held because of an incomplete address, an abbreviated name or a vague purpose. ISO 20022 makes such inconsistencies easier to detect.

At Soulbit Academy we explain what changed in cross-border payment messages and what a Latin American company should have ready before it sends or receives an international transfer. We already covered the cost of a transfer and the comparison with stablecoins elsewhere; this guide is about the data.

The ISO 20022 migration in international transfers: what changed and when

ISO 20022 now governs Swift cross-border payment instructions between financial institutions. MT/MX coexistence for these instructions ended on 22 November 2025. Swift said 97% were already sent using ISO 20022, according to its official press release.

Some MT instructions can still enter contingency conversion, which carries charges from 1 January 2026, according to Swift's FAQ.

The practical difference is structure. An MT message placed sender and beneficiary details in free-text lines. An ISO 20022 message gives each item its own field: name, street, building number, town, country, identifier, purpose, reference. A system can validate and reconcile a field; a block of text, far less reliably.

For a company, the consequence is documentary, not technical. Details once typed "as they fit" must now exist, complete and separate, in the supplier or customer record. The bank takes them from the form you fill in.

What data an ISO 20022 transfer requires from the sender

Your bank may ask for sender, beneficiary, bank and payment purpose details. Its form determines the exact fields. Table 1 lists useful data and common errors.

Data item	What the company should provide	Common error
Beneficiary name	Legal name exactly as on the bank account, no invented abbreviations	Using the trading name instead of the legal name
Beneficiary address	Street, number, town, postcode and country in separate fields; at least town and country	One free-text line, or the country only
Beneficiary account and bank	IBAN or account number plus the receiving bank's BIC	A mistyped digit or the BIC of another branch
Sender details	Legal name, tax ID and address of your own company in the same format	An old address or no separate town
Payment purpose	A concrete description: invoice, contract or service with its reference	Writing only 'payment' or 'various'
Invoice reference	Invoice or order number in the reference field	Leaving it out, forcing manual reconciliation
Entity identifier (LEI or other)	Only when the bank or counterparty asks for it	Supplying an expired identifier or one for another entity

Two caveats matter. First, ISO 20022 allowing a field does not mean your bank requires it every time. The LEI is a legal entity identifier the standard accommodates; no general rule imposes it on every company.

Second, the list has a public basis. The Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) at the BIS published harmonised ISO 20022 data requirements for cross-border payments, updated on 26 February 2026. They are non-regulatory guidance meant to align banks toward 2027; see the BIS report.

Why does the payment purpose matter so much?

Payment purpose helps a bank understand the transaction. A concrete description consistent with an invoice or contract may reduce questions. A vague one may prompt a request for supporting documents.

Your country may add its own paperwork on top. In Colombia, for example, an outbound payment is a foreign exchange operation with its own documentation, and what you write as the purpose should be consistent with it. Our guide to the foreign exchange regime for companies in Colombia covers the detail, and so does the one on the support document for payments to foreign suppliers.

Structured or hybrid postal addresses from 14 November 2026

Swift plans to require structured or hybrid postal addresses in affected CBPR+ payment messages from 14 November 2026, where an address is provided. That date is still ahead. Check the Swift guidance and confirm the format with your bank.

A structured address separates street, building number, postcode, town and country. A hybrid address combines structured fields, including town and country, with limited free text. Swift will stop accepting fully unstructured addresses in affected messages.

Swift says affected messages with non-compliant addresses will be rejected on its network, without contingency conversion. Review supplier and customer records before the deadline.

What a company should do, concretely:

• Review the record of each frequent supplier and split the address into fields.
• Make sure town and country are always present and match the supplier's own documents.
• Update the sender's own address at the bank, because it also travels in the message.
• Ask new counterparties for a full address and exact legal name at first contact.

Why international transfers get rejected or held

An international transfer is rejected or held when a field is missing, does not match, or triggers a compliance review. They are different outcomes: a rejection returns the instruction; a hold leaves funds under review while someone asks for clarification. Table 2 separates them by cause.

Cause	How it shows up	What the sender fixes
Unstructured or incomplete address	The bank returns the instruction or asks you to redo it before sending	Provide street, town and country in separate fields
Name differs from the account holder	The receiving bank cannot apply the funds or queries the holder	Use the beneficiary's exact legal name
Wrong account number or BIC	Return of funds, minus intermediary charges	Confirm details with the beneficiary through a verified channel
Vague purpose	Request for an invoice or contract before release	State purpose and reference from the start
Sanctions list match	Manual review and requests for information on the parties	Provide documents that clarify identity and the commercial relationship

None of this is new in itself. What is new is that the structured format leaves more fields to validate automatically, so an error that used to pass as free text now creates an exception. When a payment enters review because of a list match, the logic is the one described in our guide to sanctions list screening in international payments.

How long does a hold take to clear?

It depends on the bank, the correspondents and how fast the sender responds; there is no verifiable general timeframe. What you control is your answer: the sooner you supply the requested documents, the sooner funds move. Keep the invoice, contract and beneficiary details in one folder before you send.

To size the cost of this friction, and of the fees and margins a transfer already carries, see our analysis of how much a Swift transfer costs in 2026. We do not repeat those figures here.

Illustrative case: a Mexican exporter waiting for a payment from Europe

The company in this case is fictional: a Mexican furniture exporter with 25 employees that invoices a customer in Spain. All data are assumptions, not results from a client and not Soulbit rates. The case shows the order of decisions, not a real transaction.

The customer sends the payment after the format change. The exporter's record at the customer's bank shows the company name abbreviated and an address that reads "Av. Industrial 450 Guadalajara", with no country. The purpose says "payment".

The customer's bank holds the instruction and asks for corrections. The country is missing in its own field, the name does not match the legal name on the exporter's account, and the purpose cannot be tied to an invoice. As an assumption of the case, the funds reach the exporter two business days later than expected.

The lesson is not the delay. All three issues were data, not money, and the exporter could have avoided them by sending its customer a complete record with the invoice. That record would hold:

• Full legal name, copied from the company's registration.
• Street, number, postcode, town and country in separate fields.
• IBAN or account number and BIC of the receiving bank.
• A purpose line: "Invoice 2026-044, office furniture" with the reference in its field.

If the exporter instead pays its own suppliers abroad, the logic flips: it must collect that same record from each supplier before the first payment.

Checklist before sending or receiving an international transfer

Before sending an international transfer, a company should verify six groups of data and keep the supporting documents. The checklist works for receiving too, because the bank on the other side applies the same rules.

1. Exact legal name of the beneficiary, as on the bank account.
2. Address in separate fields, with town and country always present.
3. Account (IBAN or number) and bank BIC, confirmed through a verified channel.
4. Concrete purpose and invoice reference, consistent with the contract.
5. Additional identifiers (your own tax ID, the LEI if the bank asks) that are current and belong to the right entity.
6. Foreign exchange and supporting paperwork required in the sender's country, saved and at hand.

After sending, keep the confirmation message and the payment reference number. If a hold occurs, that number is the first thing the bank will ask for.

Treat any change of bank account announced by email with suspicion and confirm it through a second channel before you update the supplier record.

What Soulbit V1 delivers and what it does not, regarding ISO 20022

Soulbit does not issue Swift transfers and does not set ISO 20022 rules. It is a custodial platform: it holds balances in stablecoins (USDC and USDT) and in fiat (USD, EUR and GBP), with institutional custody using MPC, KYB verification and human support. Its only local banking rail is Colombia.

What V1 does offer is another route to move value: stablecoin payments, eOTC conversion on quote, payment links and collection QR codes. That route has its own verification and data requirements, different from Swift's. The comparison is in Swift vs stablecoins for international payments.

What Soulbit does not do matters equally. It does not offer bank accounts or deposits and holds no banking licence. It does not file your foreign exchange declaration or prepare your supporting documents. It does not remove identity and source-of-funds checks. And nothing here claims a lower price: each company should compare real quotes.