Updated: October 2026
If your bank has told you unstructured addresses will stop working in November 2026, that date has now moved.
On 27 August 2026, Swift agreed to an industry request for more time and deferred all the payment changes planned for November 2026. The Bank of England deferred its entire November 2026 CHAPS release on the same day. The European Payments Council has since paused the same change for SEPA.
That doesn’t mean ISO 20022 has stalled. Several changes are already live, and the move to structured data is still going ahead. Here’s where each deadline stands, and what we’d do in the meantime.
What’s already live?
Three ISO 20022 changes are already in force:
- May 2025: Financial institutions must add the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) and Purpose of Payment (PoP) Code to payments between financial institutions sent via CHAPS. All other organisations must add the PoP Code to CHAPS payments related to property, such as a completion payment on a house purchase.
- November 2025: Swift’s coexistence period ended on 22 November 2025. Cross-border payment messages between banks now use ISO 20022 instead of the old MT format.
- November 2025: CHAPS and Swift now accept hybrid addresses, with town and country in their own fields plus up to two lines of free text for the rest. It’s a stepping stone between today’s free-text addresses and fully structured ones.
What’s been delayed?
- Removing unstructured addresses in CHAPS and Swift. This was due in November 2026 and is now deferred. The Bank of England expects to move it to November 2027, but that isn’t confirmed yet. Swift says it will publish its new timetable by December 2026 at the latest.
- Removing unstructured addresses in SEPA. The European Payments Council had set 15 November 2026 as the end date for unstructured addresses across its payment schemes. In September 2026 it postponed that date, and a new one hasn’t been announced yet.
- Structured remittance data in CHAPS. This won’t be mandated from November 2026, and no new date has been set.
What’s expected next?
The Bank of England plans to make the Purpose of Payment Code mandatory for all CHAPS payments in November 2027, and to require LEIs on more types of payment between financial institutions. Both are subject to confirmation. The Bank expects to publish its updated list of November 2027 changes in December 2026, with the final list in April 2027.
For Bacs and Faster Payments, Pay.UK hasn’t confirmed a date for moving to ISO 20022.
So, while you may not be impacted right now, there is undeniable value in understanding the changes that are coming. How will they impact your payments infrastructure? Which of your 3rd party tools and banks will require changes to their data input/output/storage? And what internal resources will be required from you to manage such a large financial transformation project?
Bank Statements: Moving from MT to CAMT
Bank statements are easy to overlook when discussing ISO 20022 – after all, the primary focus is ensuring payments are successfully processed.
But ISO 20022 will fundamentally change the bank statement format, too. All those additional data points you are now required to add into your payment instructions (LEI, PoP, etc.) will also be reported back to you by the bank.
The end of Swift’s coexistence period in November 2025 applied to messages sent between banks. It didn’t set a date to switch off the MT940 statements many businesses get from their banks. Even so, more banks are offering CAMT statements (camt.053 and camt.052), an ISO 20022 format that carries more detail on each transaction – an exciting prospect for treasurers looking to get more strategic value (read: deeper insights) out of their reconciliation and cash positioning processes.
If you currently receive your bank statements through SWIFT in an MT format, now is the time to ask your banks what their plans are, and review what changes might be required from your finance infrastructure and 3rd party software providers like your ERP. Are back-office systems ready to receive and read correctly these new formats? Where will this additional data be stored?
Core treasury processes like reconciliation and cash forecasting will be impacted – but beyond just additional admin, the new data-rich formats will provide an opportunity for deeper insights into organisations’ cash reserves and more.
What to do while you wait
The delay gives you more time, not a reason to stop. A few things worth doing now:
- Check your supplier records. Make sure every payee has at least a town and country in separate fields, so you can send hybrid addresses today.
- Ask your banks about their own deadlines. Some may ask for structured addresses before the schemes do.
- Check your payment files. If your ERP produces pain.001 files, confirm they can carry structured address fields, and that property payments carry the right PoP Code.
- Watch for December. Swift’s new timetable and the Bank of England’s November 2027 change list are both expected then. We’ll update this page when they’re published.
If you want to learn more, visit our ISO 20022 resource hub and subscribe to our newsletter, which will keep you informed of timeline changes and mandatory migration requirements as they’re confirmed.
