CHAPS transitions to latest global financial messaging standard

The Bank of England (BoE) has published a press statement to inform that it has successfully migrated the Clearing House Automated Payment System (CHAPS), the UK’s high-value payments system, to the ISO 20022 financial messaging standard. This is part of a multi-year program to renew the Bank’s Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) service, aiming to enhance resilience, competition, and innovation in the payments landscape.
The adoption of the ISO 20022 is a significant milestone towards a single global payment messaging standard, which allows for the transmission of more structured data with payments. Many major jurisdictions plan to implement the ISO 20022 by November 2025 which is the officially announced retirement date of SWIFT’s own messaging standards for cross border payments.
The ISO 20022 offers numerous benefits to institutions, including a global harmonization of payments, particularly of cross-border payments, the ease of compliance with due diligence and money laundering-related rules and regulations, increased resilience, or the improvement of processing time and accuracy. While consumers and businesses are not required to change their payment processes (immediately), they may have the option to include additional information or references in their CHAPS payments in the future. Therefore, the BoE encourages firms and individuals alike to get familiar with the new standard.
As to the way forward, the Bank notes that the RTGS „Renewal Program“ will continue with the introduction of a new core settlement engine for RTGS in the summer of 2024, following the core infrastructure enhancements made in the current phase.