Will digital currencies wax and wane as ISO 20022 is adopted?

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) was established in Belgium in 1973 and designed to replace telex as well as allow banks to exchange messages as to who owed what. In November 2022, SWIFT had planned to introduce ISO 20022 - a global standard for exchanging electronic messages - but this has now been delayed to March 2023. The result of this is that the 11,500 banks and four billion bank accounts which have access to the SWIFT platform currently will have the ability to be able to receive ISO 20022 payment messages. The intention is that by November 2025, all messages (both sending and receiving) must be based on ISO 20022 and so usher-in a global standard in which to send messages and, indeed, transfer value. SWIFT believes that 80% of global, high-value payments by volume will be then processed through ISO 20022. In the interim, JP Morgan has summarised the key benefits that ISO 20022 will offer, including that:

·      it is a standard for exchan…