With SWIFT putting the international payments community on notice that it will stop supporting some of its messaging standards in 2025, the Payments System Board has told the local industry that migration to the ISO 20022 standard for payments is a "key strategic issue".The Reserve Bank and the Australian Payments Council yesterday issued a consultation paper on ISO 20022 migration, seeking industry agreement on how to handle the change.SWIFT announced that it would stop supporting Message Type messaging standards (in categories 1, 2 and 9), which are used in cross-border and correspondent banking payments. It plans to move these payments to ISO 20022 by 2025.SWIFT says its goal is to move all payment types to ISO 20022, allowing payments companies to use the same standards for all payment flows.The consultation paper says migration projects are already underway in other markets and it is time for Australia to get on with it."The intention is to ensure the migration project is undertaken in a timeframe that does not pose risk to the payment system and that appropriately considers the objectives of migration and broader long-term opportunities for the industry," the paper says.The RBA and APC say they want the project completed by the end of 2024 - ahead of SWIFT's migration.ISO 20022 is a general purpose standard for development of financial industry messaging in the payments, securities, trade services, cards and foreign exchange markets. In the payments market it covers messaging related to cash account management, payments initiation, clearing and settlement.It is an open standard, maintained by the International Organisation of Standardisation. It is network independent and allows for enhanced data content.The consultation paper says the migration would include, "at a minimum", the adoption of ISO 20022 for the SWIFT Payment Delivery System; back office functions, including treasury, reconciliation, AML/CTF and sanctions screening systems; the Reserve Bank Information and Transfer System; RITS batch settlement  arrangements such as Mastercard, eftpos and CHESS; and SWIFT message between participants and the Austraclear debt securities settlement system.Some of the questions in the consultation paper include whether organisations are currently using ISO 20022, what the risks of migration might be.ISO 20022 will not take many industry participants by surprise. Its first edition was released in 2004 and was updated in 2013.Organisations that will be heavily involved in the migration include the RBA, the Australian Securities Exchange, the digital property transaction settlement service PEXA, Mastercard, Visa, Bpay, eftpos and NPP AustraliaThe New Payments Platform was built on the ISO 20022 standard and NPP Australia is working on additional applications. In February, it issued its own consultation document seeking input from stakeholders on the development of NPP ISO 20022 guidelines for payroll, PAYG tax and superannuation payments.An NPP Australia spokesperson told Banking Day: "The types of benefits these data standards can enable include the ability to reconcile where a payment has come from and how that payment is unique. They tell an organisation what to do with that payment, as well as feed consistent granular information into organisational reports