The solution has been deemed a SWIFT-as-a-Service solution and has its major focus is to enable banks, fintechs, and payment service providers to gain API access to SWIFT for payments and cash management services.
According to the official press release, the solution will allow institutions to reduce operational costs and overheads by leveraging scalable cloud-based services. Form3’s fully managed service shields customers from annual standards releases, including the upcoming ISO 20022 migration, alongside backwards compatibility for receiving MT messages.
Customers of the service will reportedly benefit from a zero-footprint solution, one that will beremoving the need to implement and manage software and hardware for connecting to SWIFT. The new Form3 service is designed to provide higher degrees of speed and security over traditional connectivity models, which is critical to scale and meet customer expectations in today’s financial services environment.
The Form3 SWIFT as a service solution will go live for customers towards the end of 2022.
According to information coming from SWIFT, SWIFT will enable ISO 20022 messages for cross-border payments and cash reporting businesses, starting from August 2022, on opt-in basis, and November 2022 for general availability. There will be a three-year period of coexistence for MT (message type – MT – that transmits financial information from one financial institution to another) and MX (MX is an XML message definition for use on the SWIFT network. Most MX messages are also ISO 20022 messages), allowing early adopters to benefit from ISO 20022’s structured data, and other banks to adopt at their own pace. SWIFT will facilitate the interoperability of MX to MT with the network’s central In-flow Translation service.
During the coexistence period, from November 2022, some financial institutions will begin sending ISO 20022 messages to gain the full benefits of structured data. Other banks will migrate at their own pace, relying on central In-flow Translation, or local translation services, until their back office is natively ready to process ISO messages, SWIFT official information says. November 2022 marks the moment when any bank can start sending MX messages, independently of their correspondent’s preferred channel (MT or MX).
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