SWIFT today announces initiation of the development phase with EBA CLEARING to migrate the large-value payment system EURO1 to the ISO 20022 standard, marking the next step in a transformation journey they began together last year.
The two organisations will work toward a November 2021 completion date to correspond with the deadline for the ISO 20022 migration of the Eurosystem’s TARGET2 platform. The goal is to align specifications and milestones to minimise effort by market participants during the
transition and ensure seamless intra-day switching between both euro payment systems.
ISO 20022 creates a new language and structure for payments information, enabling the exchange of more and higher quality data that in turn improves efficiency, compliance and client experiences. Payment systems of all reserve currencies are moving to the standard, and SWIFT has put in place a robust programme to facilitate community-wide adoption.
Alain Raes, Chief Business Development Officer, SWIFT said: “The migration to ISO 20022 is a significant inflection point in the payments industry that promises a new era of possibilities. We are pleased to work with EBA CLEARING to unlock the potential and further a partnership of innovation that spans two decades. EURO1 users can count on us to support them throughout and deliver the same robust security, resilience and reliability that are hallmarks of the SWIFT network.”
SWIFT has provided the messaging layer for EURO1 and served as processing agent for the system operated by EBA CLEARING since its launch in January 1999.
The ISO 20022 migration is part of a larger future positioning programme that the two organisations announced last year after a comprehensive consultation with EURO1 users. The project seeks to evolve EURO1 in line with user expectations while maintaining benefits such as liquidity efficiency, immediate payment finality, cost effectiveness and added resilience for high-value payments. The first deliverables, including a dashboard to enhance liquidity monitoring capabilities of EURO1 users, will be implemented before the end of 2019.
Erwin Kulk, Head of Service Development and Management, EBA CLEARING, said: “Since its launch in 1999, EURO1 has generated substantial cost savings for its participants and, with the migration to ISO 20022, it will be able to continue to do so in the future. We are striving to keep the EURO1-related efforts to a strict minimum for our users. To this effect, we are pleased that we are ready to move forward with our system developments in time and in maximal alignment with TARGET2, together with our EURO1 users and our long-standing EURO1 technology partner SWIFT.”
EURO1 is the only private sector large-value payment system for single same-day euro transactions at a pan European level and has been identified as a systemically important payment system (SIPS) by the European Central Bank.
EURO1 processes on average 200,000 payments per day with an average total value of over EUR 200 billion. The system currently counts 45 participant banks and reaches nearly 20,000 BICs in and beyond Europe.
