Payments Canada has announced the availability of ISO 20022 messages for Lynx, the country's new high-value payments system.
With Lynx slated to go live next year, the publication of ISO 20022 messages for the platform means system participants can start preparing their existing applications to leverage the standard.
Likewise, vendors who support Canada’s payments ecosystem can use the published messages to update their applications and develop new services for Lynx participants and the wider ecosystem.
The ISO 20022 messages for Lynx also support Canadian financial institutions preparing to meet Swift's migration date for cross-border payments, expected to roll out at the end of 2022.
Payments Canada says ISO 20022 should give financial institutions and their customers access to enhanced remittance data, support for global interoperability, and a reduction in the use of paper-based payment options.
Andrew McFarlane, executive director, modernisation, Payments Canada, says: “As a foundational layer of Canada's payments Modernization initiative, ISO 20022 will support interoperable cross-border exchanges, the introduction of new products and services, and the digitization of manual and paper-based processes related to invoicing and payment reconciliation.”
Lynx is a fundamental part of Payments Canada’s multi-year, multi-system payments modernisation initiative. SIA has been awarded the build contract, with IBM providing combined hosting and system integration services for end-to-end delivery and system operations.