FRFS Completes Implementation of ISO 20022 for Fedwire Funds Service

Federal Reserve Financial Services (FRFS) completed its previously announced adoption of the ISO 20022 message format for the Fedwire Funds Service.

It did so in a single-day implementation on Monday (July 14), according to its ISO 20022 implementation center, as it said it would do in a June 18 announcement.

“With this implementation, we sunset the existing proprietary Fedwire Application Interface Manual (FAIM) format and replaced all FAIM messages with ISO 20022 messages,” FRFS said in a note in the implementation center.

When announcing on June 18 that the FRFS confirmed that it would move ahead with the implementation of ISO 20022 on July 14, as planned, FRFS said it had worked with the industry for several years to prepare for the move.

The Fedwire Funds Service is the Federal Reserve Banks’ real-time gross settlement system, while ISO 20022 is a message format developed by the International Organization for Standardization, the Federal Reserve said in an October 2021 press release.

The Federal Reserve announced in the release that the Federal Reserve Banks would adopt ISO 20022.

“The change will allow for enhanced efficiency of both domestic and cross-border payments, and a richer set of payment data that may help banks and other entities comply with sanctions and anti-money laundering requirements,” the release said.

ISO 20022 emerged as a potentially transformative standard for improving data richness and fostering interoperability, reducing friction and paving the way for innovations in the way money moves globally, PYMNTS reported in December.

Unlike legacy formats, this universal messaging framework enables the transmission of more detailed and structured data, reducing errors and improving reconciliation processes.

Swift said in December 2024 that with one year to go before its November deadline to move to ISO 20022 for cross-border payments and reporting plus (CBPR+), more than 1 million ISO 20022-formatted messages were already being sent over the Swift network every day.

The organization reported that early adopters of ISO 20022 were seeing improvements like increased operability across systems and enhanced processing capabilities.

When The Clearing House settled a record $2.6 trillion on Black Friday, it credited the accomplishment in part to the organizations’ CHIPS network’s adoption of the ISO 20022 message format in April 2024.

The Clearing House said the migration means that CHIPS messages now align with message formats used by similar payment systems, enhancing the efficiency and information content of cross-border payments for CHIPS participants and their customers.