ISO 20022 in a nutshell

The latest standard to allow financial systems worldwide to communicate smoothly with each other is ISO 20022. This standard imposes fixed payment and reporting formats that function as a universal language between financial institutions and companies.

Key features at a glance:

The standard uses more structured formats (XML) for payments and reporting.
Those formats contain more data than previous versions, enabling more effective sanction screening and faster reconciliation.
From November 2026, only structured or hybrid addresses will be allowed in SEPA and international payment messages.

For whom is the ISO 20022 standard important?

If you only enter manual payment transactions using the KBC Business Dashboard or Isabel, for example, you won't encounter any problems. The screens have been modified to allow you to enter only the correct information when creating payments.

Do you upload payment files? Then you need to be extra vigilant. These files may contain payments with unstructured address structures, and that can lead to problems.

In summary, if you want or need to pass along an address from November 2026, it should always be in structured or hybrid format.

Make sure you are ready in time to work with structured payment messages according to the ISO 20022 standard. To do this, contact your TMS, ERP or accounting vendor to check whether they already support the standard.

FAQs

There are three different address structures within XML payment formats: 

1. Unstructured address: 

These are address lines without structured fields. This means that only free text fields are allowed for entering address information. From November 2026, these will no longer be allowed. This also applies to the unstructured MT101 payment formats when you include an address in them. We recommend switching to the structured XML format ‘pain.001’.

2. Structured address:  

Here, there are separate fields for each address field, with ‘Country’ and ‘Town Name’ being mandatory. Depending on the version of the pain.001 payment format, other structured address fields may be included.

3. Hybrid address:  

This is a combination of structured and unstructured address fields. The mandatory fields are ‘Country Code’, ‘Town Name’ and at least one free text field, ‘Address Line’. Depending on the version of the pain.001 payment format, other structured address fields may be included.

Address field	Unstructured	Structured	Hybrid
Department	n/a	Optional	Optional
Sub department	n/a	Optional	Optional
Street name	n/a	Optional	Optional
Building number	n/a	Optional	Optional
Building name	n/a	Optional	Optional
Floor	n/a	Optional	Optional
Post box	n/a	Optional	Optional
Room	n/a	Optional	Optional
Postal code	n/a	Optional	Optional
Town name	n/a	Mandatory	Mandatory
Town location name	n/a	Optional	Optional
District name	n/a	Optional	Optional
Country sub division	n/a	Optional	Optional
Country	Mandatory for SEPA	Mandatory	Mandatory
Address line 1	One address line is mandatory	n/a	One address line is mandatory
Address line 2	Optional	n/a	Optional

Timing

Unstructured: no longer allowed from November 2026
Structured: Always allowed
Hybrid: Allowed from November 2025

Below is an overview of when it is best to use addresses. From November 2026, only structured or hybrid address structures will be allowed. If you include unstructured addresses for international payments after that date, KBC might charge a fee or the payment might not be processed.

Credit transfer (pain.001)

Debtor Address	Mandatory for payments to countries outside the EEA. This address will be filled in automatically. You are not required to do anything.
Creditor address	Optional for SEPA transactions. Mandatory for payments to the US and Canada (because of the 'Travel Rule'). If these payments are forwarded without an address, the creditor's bank will request additional information on address details and charge you extra for this. For international payments in other currencies or to other countries, KBC recommends always filling in the creditor's full address. If you do not do this, or if you enter an incomplete address, the creditor's bank may request additional data at additional cost, or even reject the payment.

Direct debit (pain.008)

Debtor address	Mandatory for direct debit collections from IBAN accounts held in countries outside the EEA. If you continue to use unstructured address structures after November 2026, the payment will not go through.
Creditor address	Optional

Contact your ERP, TMS or accounting package supplier to check whether it will support the enriched and structured address formats in a timely manner. You can also make a start yourself by storing the address information of your customers and suppliers in a structured way in your administration systems. This can be done by storing each part of an address in a separate address field, as described in the table for Question 1.

Want more information?

Be sure to visit the Febelfin website, where you will find more details.