As the financial services industry inches closer to the end of the co-existence period for ISO 20022 in late 2025, the partnership between Swift and Bottomline is helping to shape the future of cross-border payments. At Sibos 2024 in Beijing, Julie Bolan, head of payments, APAC, Global Transaction Management (GTM), Swift, and Vitus Rotzer, chief product officer of financial messaging at Bottomline, discussed how their collaboration is evolving and what lies ahead.

With the ISO 20022 migration deadline fast approaching, Bolan and Rotzer emphasised the importance of financial institutions (FIs) accelerating their transition. “We are not yet where we need to be,” said Bolan, pointing out that only 27% of messages are currently ISO 20022 compliant. However, there is optimism that this figure will reach 40% by the end of 2024, with banks intensifying their migration efforts.

Rotzer highlighted Bottomline’s support in this transformation, particularly for institutions moving from deployed architectures to more agile-hosted services. “It's all about economies of scale and skills,” he explained, emphasising that Bottomline’s shared environment relieves the burden of infrastructure management, certification, and audit complexities for their customers.

A cornerstone of Swift’s strategy to reduce friction and enhance the efficiency of cross-border payments is its transaction management platform. Bolan explained how the platform builds on the foundation of Swift global payments innovation (GPI) and focuses on three key pillars: business rule validations, data integrity, and transaction copy.

By introducing these elements, the transaction management platform aims to ensure seamless end-to-end payment processing, with enhanced data integrity and fewer errors. Bolan noted that richer data under ISO 20022 would support this effort, enabling banks to process transactions faster and with fewer exceptions.

Bolan and Rotzer agreed that while significant progress has been made, there is still more to be done to achieve the Group of 20 (G20) targets of faster, more transparent, and frictionless cross-border payments. Bolan shared promising statistics: 90% of Swift transactions are already reaching the beneficiary bank within an hour, surpassing the G20 target of 75%. However, only 43% of transactions are credited to the end customer account within that timeframe, highlighting the need for further improvements in domestic payment processing.

Rotzer pointed out that as the volume of cross-border payments grows, so too do the number of payment rejects and exceptions. In 2023, Swift saw two million rejected transactions due to incorrect beneficiary details, which underscores the need for improved data accuracy and validation.

As domestic services such as confirmation of payee (CoP) gain momentum globally, the potential synergies with Swift’s pre-validation services are becoming increasingly clear. Swift’s pre-validation service aims to reduce errors and delays in cross-border transactions by verifying beneficiary details at the payment initiation stage. Integrating this service with domestic CoP schemes can help deliver a more seamless payment experience, both domestically and internationally.

Rotzer emphasised the importance of managing payments as a process rather than a one-off transaction, with application programming interface (API)-based services playing a crucial role in supporting this transition. Swift’s suite of APIs, integrated into Bottomline’s workflows, enables earlier validation and error detection, thereby reducing friction in the payment journey.

Both Bolan and Rotzer are optimistic about the future of cross-border payments, though they acknowledge that challenges remain. “We are moving in the right direction,” said Bolan, “but we need to maintain momentum as we approach the end of the ISO 20022 migration period.”

For Bottomline, the focus will continue to be on helping its customers transition to more efficient, hosted solutions while supporting Swift’s ongoing initiatives to improve payment processing speed, transparency, and security.

The collaboration between Swift and Bottomline is facilitating the industry’s efforts to meet the G20 targets, and their work together has the potential to usher in a new era of faster, more reliable cross-border payments.