Update as of July 14, 2025: Fedwire successfully went live with the ISO 20022 migration as planned. All of Alacriti’s customers are now live and fully upgraded to support the new messaging standard.
Update as of June 18, 2025: The Fed has confirmed that “FRFS will move forward with implementing the new ISO 20022 message format on July 14 as planned”. Alacriti’s clients will already be successfully migrated to ISO 20022 by that date.
On February 13, the Fed announced a change in the ISO 20022 migration date. The Federal Reserve Banks originally planned to adopt the ISO 20022 standard for the Fedwire Funds Service in a single-day implementation strategy on March 10, 2025, but it is now being rescheduled to July 14, 2025, to “provide customers and vendors who are not ready additional time to better prepare for the transition.”
ISO 20022 is a globally accepted messaging standardization approach introduced in 2005 by the International Organization for Standardization, intending to use the same language for all financial communications. The Fedwire migration marks a significant turning point in the modernization of the American payment system that complies with best practices and international standards.
Here are the actions the Federal Reserve recommends:
- Share this information with your operational and technical staff along with your software vendor and/or processor (if applicable).
- Urgently review your entire wire ecosystem (PDF) and ensure it is ready to continue to process FAIM-formatted messages on and after March 10 and for the ISO 20022 implementation on July 14.
- Use this additional time to continue testing in the depository institution testing (DIT2) environment and with your peers.
- Learn more about the new ISO 20022 implementation date in the coming days on the Implementation Center.
In addition, the Fed has outlined several contingency strategies in the event a financial institution is not able to send or receive ISO 20022 messages through the Fedwire Funds Service.
Key contingency recommendations include:
- Establishing or validating existing correspondent banking arrangements (bankers’ bank, corporate credit union) through which institutions can send and receive payment messages.
- Ensuring sufficient trained staff to send ISO 20022 messages via the FedPayments® Manager – Funds application through the FedLine Advantage® Solution (manual entry message screens or import/upload feature).
- Increasing staffing for manual payment processing—including screening, reconciliation, and credit posting (ancillary systems like OFAC and fraud screening).
- Reviewing procedures for manually processing incoming messages (treasury management, posting credits to your customers’ accounts, reconciliation activities).
- Exploring ISO 20022 message translation services.
While these contingency strategies are offered for guidance, each institution remains responsible for preparing and maintaining its own contingency plans. FRFS assumes no liability in cases of failure to send or receive ISO 20022 or other messages.
In partnership with the Federal Reserve, Alacriti has been proactive about ISO 20022. Alacriti’s solutions have all APIs built to the ISO 20022 standard, which is imperative for the RTP network and the FedNow Service, and also to accommodate the implementation that Fedwire has planned for this year. Alacriti is ready to help and already has clients live and running on a system that is built from the ground up to be in compliance. Alacriti is happy to discuss upgrade options for institutions still preparing for ISO 20022 readiness or looking to improve long-term compliance and operational resilience.
Read more about ISO 20022 in ISO 20022: Why After Almost 2 Decades It’s More Important than Ever.
This is an update on an original post published February 2025
Alacriti’s centralized payment platform, Orbipay Payments Hub, provides innovation opportunities and the ability to make smart routing decisions at the financial institution to meet their individual needs. Financial institutions can take full ownership of their payments and control their evolution with ACH, Wire, TCH’s RTP® network, Visa Direct, and the FedNow® Service, all on one cloud-based platform. To speak with an Alacriti payments expert, please contact us at (908) 791-2916 or info@alacriti.com.
