ISO 20022 Payments Modernisation: How Icon Solutions Prepares Banks for Real-Time Rails

Описание: Are banks truly ready for ISO 20022 — or are legacy systems becoming the bottleneck?

At Sibos 2025, Liam Jeffs and Toine van Beusekom from Icon Solutions discuss the real state of ISO 20022 payments modernisation and what financial institutions must do to support the next generation of payment infrastructure.

While many banks implemented tactical fixes to meet migration deadlines, competing priorities, regulatory pressures, and high transformation costs have slowed deeper change. Different interpretations of ISO 20022 have also made bank-to-bank testing challenging.

At the same time, real-time payment rails and growing transaction volumes are exposing limitations in legacy payment engines. According to Icon Solutions, banks must design systems capable of handling 10–30x today’s throughput to keep pace with rising demand.

One practical approach is to decouple the payments value chain — separating order management, payment execution, and clearing & settlement. This architecture allows banks to introduce new payment types and services without rebuilding entire systems.

Funding dynamics are also evolving. Simply citing an ISO deadline is no longer enough to justify investment. Banks now need clear business cases, including new revenue opportunities, lower cost-to-serve, and improved client value.

As regulators shift their focus from compliance toward operational resilience — particularly following high-profile outages — scalability, failover capability, and recovery planning are becoming critical priorities.

Jeffs emphasises that successful payments transformation requires close alignment between business and technology teams, supported by a clear payments strategy and modern architecture built on microservices.

With digital currencies emerging and real-time payment schemes expanding globally, Icon Solutions believes the most effective approach is steady, low-risk transformation rather than disruptive “big bang” migrations.

This interview is essential viewing for payments architects, banking technology leaders, fintech strategists, and anyone working on ISO 20022 migration and real-time payments infrastructure.

Explore the complete conversation with Icon Solutions on ISO 20022 payments modernisation, real-time payment rails, and the future of banking infrastructure :
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