Bank of England and BIS develop off-the-shelf module for analysing ISO 20022 data

The increased use of the ISO 20022 standard for payment messages in Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) systems and other market infrastructures means an increasing number of jurisdictions will adopt the protocol in the coming years. Ninety-three percent of payment system operators have already either implemented ISO 20022 or are working to implement it in their systems.

The Bank for International Settlements' Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) has published harmonised ISO 20022 data requirements amid fears over the inconsistent application of the international messaging standard across different jursidictions.

The prototype developed by the Bank of England and the BIS, under the name Project Keystone, aims to address these fears.

As part of the project, two modules have been developed. The first addressed the complexities of handling the ISO 20022 data structure and the associated data storage requirements, while the second provided analysis based on the data.

Keystone is intended to become an off-the-shelf component that payment system operators can integrate into their own systems to unlock the value of the richer payments data.

Potential use cases for central banks and other authorities include greater understanding of real-time economic conditions, system liquidity, and participant assurance, including compliance with the ISO 20022 standard itself.

Keystone has focused on only a subset of the possible analytics use cases that could be derived from the new payment standard. The BIS and BofE says future improvements to the project could focus on expanding the number of pre-build analytic use cases. Additional areas for future development relate to the provision of additional information to augment the payment message.

For example, the project partners cite the incorporation of data from BICs and LEIs, which would allow for greater understanding of which entities are included in transactions.