Citi To Accelerate ISO 20022 Adoption Via Volante Partnership

Volante Technologies, which works in cloud payments and financial messaging, is working with Citi to expedite Citi’s adoption of the ISO 20022 financial messaging standard, according to a press release.

Citi is set to be the first Volante customer to offer a unified approach to that migration around the world, the release stated.

According to the release, Citi will build its core ISO 20022 capability with Volante’s VolPay for ISO 20022 Migration solution, which will allow the sending and receiving of ISO 20022 messages, along with the usage of ISO 20022 enhanced data throughout the transactions lifestyle for sanctions screening, anti-money laundering (AML) monitoring, reporting and reconciliation.

The release also noted the existence of pre-defined official schema, covering SWIFT CBPR+ and several payment schemes, which can onboard new systems and countries into the solution.

Nick Nadgauda, global head of Technology with Citi’s Treasury and Trade Solutions, said in the release that the partnership is fortuitous because Volante’s payment processing technology is already used with Citi’s payments and transaction banking platforms.

“Using this technology will allow us to simplify the complexity of mandatory ISO 20022 migrations across the many markets in which we operate,” he said in the release. “We will be able to serve our clients even better by catering to their complex needs.”

“Significant changes are on the horizon for banks and financial institutions, with ISO 20022 migration mandates raising a multitude of operational, infrastructural and technical challenges,” said Uday Thakur, chief technology officer of Volante Technologies. “Helping banks rise to the challenge and enabling them to meet critical deadlines without slowing down modernization efforts will be key to their success. Moreover, by deploying VolPay for ISO 20022 Migration, bank treasury teams will be able to offer rich, value-added data services to their corporate clients, simplifying reconciliation effort, improving straight-through processing, and reducing fraud.”

Saqib Sheikh, global head of SWIFT’s ISO 20022 program, told PYMNTS that the chief benefit of adopting ISO 20022 is the access to better payments data. There’s a common standard, and payments will be able to be processed faster. He said all major economies intend to adopt it within the next few years.