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In the world · Finance · 22 November 2025

ISO 20022: the end of coexistence on Swift

In November 2025 the coexistence of MT and ISO 20022 messages on Swift ended, with more than 98% migrated. What changes for agribusiness.

bairogonzalez.com team, drawing on Bairo's story · Published

In November 2025, the coexistence period between the old MT messages and the ISO 20022 standard ended for international payments flowing over Swift, with more than 98% already migrated. Since then, payment instructions between financial institutions on the network, such as the old MT103 and MT202, must follow ISO 20022, a standard that carries, along with the money, structured and far more complete data about who is paying, who is receiving and why.

What happened

Swift, the financial messaging network that connects banks in almost every country, began migrating international payments and their related reporting to ISO 20022 in March 2023. For more than two years, the two languages coexisted: one bank could send a message in the old format, and another could receive it in the new one.

That coexistence ended in November 2025, with more than 98% already migrated to the new standard. According to Swift, from then on no payment instruction in MT format would be delivered over the FIN network for this type of transaction. The cooperative began offering a contingency translation service, which converts remaining old messages to the new format, and warned that it should not be seen as a long-term solution. BNY, one of the world's large correspondent banks, published similar guidance to its clients.

Swift described the milestone as the beginning of a new era for global payments, with richer and more structured data.

The migration, however, is not yet complete in every field. According to PYMNTS and Global Finance, in July 2026 about 58% of the addresses in messages were still in unstructured format, and the November 2026 deadline for structured addresses was postponed. The language has changed; the complete filling-in of the data is still under way.

Why it matters

The old message was like a short note: it said how much, from whom and to whom, with free-text fields that each bank filled in its own way. ISO 20022 is a complete, standardized form. Structured address, payment purpose, invoice references and party identification travel in their own fields, which machines can read without interpretation.

This has three practical effects. First, fewer payments held up by doubts: when the data arrives complete, the bank on the other side does not need to ask. Second, better controls against fraud and money laundering, because the system can cross-check information. Third, automatic reconciliation: the receiving company knows exactly which invoice was paid.

For food exporters, this third point weighs heavily. A shipment involves an invoice, freight, insurance and sanitary documents. When the payment arrives carrying the invoice reference, the exporter releases the next shipment faster, and the buyer gains confidence.

In Bairo's view

Bairo Leandro Gonzalez Martinez says that, when designing CEASA Bank, he chose ISO 20022 messaging as the foundation and heard from banks that the solution would not be integrated. In his reading, the end of coexistence shows that the standard has stopped being a choice and has become the common language of money between countries.

For Bairo, the infrastructure that connects agribusiness to the world starts with this technical detail. The Brazilian grower who sells abroad does not need to know what ISO 20022 is, but feels the effect when the payment arrives on the right day and without questions. In his view, data needs to travel together with money, because, for those who sell food, information about the shipment matters as much as the amount.

He measures everything in lifetime. Every payment held for checking is a day someone waits. For Bairo, standardizing the message is giving that time back to those who work.

Where this meets the ecosystem

CEASA Bank, an agribusiness financial platform founded by Bairo that operates on the infrastructure of an authorized institution, was designed to speak ISO 20022 from the start, linking the quote, the invoice and the payment for a food shipment. Sending and receiving international payments always goes through participating, authorized institutions.

The BTZ Chain completes the design with a public record, which anyone can check in the explorer, proposed to prove that a fact happened and that there is a real person behind it. BICOIN, this network's governance coin, follows the yardstick "1 BTZ = 1 minute of human life", which measures purpose and is neither a price nor an invitation to buy.

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