What is ISO 20022?

ISO 20022 is a set of XML message schemas for payments, cash management, and related banking traffic. SEPA, RTP, FedNow, and SWIFT’s newer wires use it. The standard names the fields. It does not move money. Your rail still settles. Your ledger still records the obligation.

How does ISO 20022 work?

Each message type has a short name, such as pacs.008 for a customer credit or camt.053 for a statement. The XML has a place for amount, parties, identifiers, and remittance. Banks map those fields instead of stuffing everything into an 80-character addenda.

ISO 20022 vs Nacha

Nacha is a fixed-width US ACH file. ISO 20022 is a family of messages used on many rails. An ACH API and an RTP API may both speak JSON to you and ISO 20022 to the bank. Persist the identifiers the message carried. You will need them for recon.

What do you store?

End-to-end id, instruction id, and the UETR if a SWIFT message has one. Those keys match the statement to your post. The XML itself can live in object storage. The keys belong on the transaction.

How it works with Blnk

Blnk does not emit ISO 20022. Your bank adapter does. Copy the message ids into metadata so reconciliation can pair the statement line to the post.