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The Federal Reserve is to delay the implementation of the new ISO 20022 payment messaging format by two years to 2025.

The Fed had previously set a deadline of November 2023 for a cutover to the extended payment message format, in line with its implementation by Swift and other global money transfer networks.

The agency says that it will instead opt for a one-day cutover on 10 March 2025.

The Fed says the revised timeline is in response to bank concerns that it was prioritising the introduction of the new messaging format to the detriment of the roll out of the FedNow real-time transfer network, which is also set to debut in November 2003.

As well as shifting the deadline, the central bank has also set out a revised testing strategy to help banks to stagger workloads and alleviate resource constraints.

“The board believes that shifting the implementation date for the migration of the Fedwire Funds Service to the ISO 20022 format to March 10, 2025, rather than targeting November 2023 as proposed, should mitigate commenters’ concerns regarding resource constraints in light of the launch of the FedNow Service,” the Fed board says.

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