Out-Law / Your Daily Need-To-Know
Payments industry experts have developed a draft new standard for real-time payments which could help speed up the time it takes for financial transactions to be processed.
The standard, developed by the Real-Time Payments Group (RTPG) under the auspices of the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), will help real-time payment systems being developed across the world to link together, according to a statement by Payments UK, the UK payments industry trade body that has helped with the work.
Maurice Cleaves, Payments UK chief executive, said the ISO 20022 standard "is likely to be a real game-changer globally and domestically, enabling a level of interoperability we have never seen before".
"Many countries and regions are implementing, or actively thinking about implementing, real-time retail payment systems – and the drafting of the technical documentation on ISO 20022 is a crucial step in supporting these markets on their journey," Payments UK said.
"The focus of the work is not merely on helping countries with their domestic implementation, it also has a large focus on interoperability between systems – a consistent set of standards will facilitate cross-border real-time payments in the future. Industry stakeholders are encouraged to become involved in the review process to ensure a truly representative and global standard by getting in touch with Payments UK," it said.
Technology and payments law expert Angus McFadyen of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said that the ISO 20022 standard may be one of the means by which some of the objectives of the EU's new Payment Services Directive (PSD2) are confirmed.
The European Banking Authority (EBA) will be tasked, under PSD2, to develop "regulatory technical standards" to enable harmonised interpretation and compliance with the new regime. McFadyen said such standards are "quite different" to technical standards like the ISO 20022 that have been developed, and it is not yet clear whether the standards the EBA will develop will go into the same level of detail.
"What’s worth recognising is that standards like ISO 20022 are already in use," McFadyen said. "The challenge, as with any standards and particularly new ones, is that there’s a great deal open for interpretation. With ISO 20022, there are at least 50 fields that can be used in different ways and so there are many different ways of applying the same standard."
Contact an adviser
