CHIPS Marks Migration to ISO 20222 Messaging

The Clearing House says its CHIPS network has migrated to the ISO 20022 messaging format.

The adoption of this format by CHIPS (Clearing House Interbank Payment System) enhances the efficiency of payments processing, The Clearing House (TCH) said in a news release on Wednesday (April 10), two days after the migration.

It also lets participants and end-user customers to gain value from enriched data content like extended remittance information and lets users query structured message formats for multiple purposes, such as sanctions and compliance screening.

According to the release, the network wrapped its first day of operations on the ISO 20022 message format having releasing 555,345 payments for a value of $1.81 trillion.

“These figures exceed expectations for volume and value for Day 1 and parallel a typical operating day on the CHIPS network,” TCH Chief Product Officer Margaret Weichert said in the release. “They reflect confidence in the performance of the CHIPS ISO 20022 platform and the promise that the new message format will deliver meaningful benefits to participants and customers.”

As PYMNTS wrote last month, ISO 20222 offers “considerable” benefits to adoptees, such as  richer and more structured data within financial messages compared to older standards.

“This increased data granularity enables better transparency, risk management, and regulatory compliance,” that report said. “It also facilitates more sophisticated analytics and reporting, leading to improved decision-making processes.”

It’s also becoming mandatory for banks that wants to use the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) system, starting November of next year.

All the same, some financial institutions have found themselves wrestling with the migration because of resource and time constraints — having initially assumed that the migration would be an easy technical exercise.

“To give adoption a shot in the arm, banks need to shift to a more strategic approach centered around capturing and maximizing the benefits of richer data which can improve accuracy, efficiency and reporting,” PYMNTS wrote. “There is no time to wait — ISO 20022 was initially planned for a global rollout two years ago.”

TCH’s announcement comes a little more than a week after the organization reported that CHIPS saved participants $4.9 billion last year, with those savings derived from the system’s liquidity savings algorithm to the tune of $13.8 million per day.

“These savings are proving especially relevant following an unprecedented cycle of monetary tightening and rising interest rates,” TCH said in a news release.