ISO 20022: The New Standard

ISO stands for the International Organization for Standardization, and it is an independent, non-governmental international organization. It brings global experts together to agree on best practices. To find out more about visit their website: https://www.iso.org/home.html.

ISO 20022 is a global standard for electronic financial messaging introduced in 2004. It is being adopted for wire transfers to replace legacy formats like SWIFT MT and EDI. It offers a richer, more structured data format, improving payment processing, compliance and reconciliation.

The transition ensures better interoperability between banks and corporations, enhances straight-through processing, improves fraud detection and aligns with regulatory and compliance needs.

City National Bank sends all domestic and international USD wires to the Federal Reserve Financial Services network via Fedwire. City National Bank sends all international FX wires to the SWIFT network. City National Bank receives incoming wires from both networks. 

By November 16, 2026, ALL outgoing wires will require Beneficiary City and Country values, and those values must be transmitted in separate fields in the wire details.

For any future wires that you establish, please always include the beneficiary’s city and country in the instructions. Likewise, please obtain those values for any of your stored wire addresses that are missing that information.

Business applications will be ready to support beneficiary city and country values at different stages during 2026, which means some applications may require city and country before November 16, 2026.

The following online applications can currently support beneficiary city and country values in separate fields:

City National Business Suite®, Business Essentials, AgilLink®, International Business Online and City National Online®.

To prepare to meet the requirements in these applications:

• If you have stored wire templates, payees or vendors, please use this time prior to the wire network deadlines to add the required beneficiary values to avoid disruption when those values become mandatory.

• If templates, payees or vendors already contain all the required values, they will function as usual after the November date.

• As you review your stored addresses, we recommend that you delete unused items. 

For any incoming wires that you receive, we recommend that you request the originator to include your city and country as part of your address to avoid any delays when these values become mandatory.

As required for ISO 20022, City National Bank will ensure that your originator information will contain the mandatory city and country values.

In addition, City National Bank will provide the Beneficiary Bank’s City and Country based upon the beneficiary bank ID unless those details are provided by the originator.

There are no changes to SWIFT BICs. City National Bank’s SWIFT BICs is: CINAUS6L