Across our professional and personal lives, there is a growing expectation that money should move instantly, however, in the world of cross-border payments, this has been something of a pipe dream – with payments often taking up to five days to clear.
A combination of regulatory pressure, competition from fintechs, and rising customer expectations are all pushing banks in the same direction; towards faster, around the clock payments.
Most banks are still operating in a hybrid world, where some of the rails may be instant, but the underlying processes and technologies needed to deliver them are not.
Why real-time payments matter now
For years, cross-border payments have been slow, opaque and fragmented, moving through multiple intermediaries with limited visibility. Neobanks and fintechs have pushed to close this gap, but traditional banks have typically lagged behind.
RTPs now offer traditional banks a route to catch up, enabling payments to be initiated, cleared and settled in seconds, processed 24/7 (including weekends and holidays), and confirmed instantly to both sender and recipient.
For corporate banking customers, this removes uncertainty, improving visibility of funds and timing to strengthen trust and the overall customer experience.
For banks, it means being able to operate with greater precision and efficiency – reducing the amount of liquidity tied up in settlement cycles, improving cash flow and balance sheet efficiency.
For the industry at large, it helps to move the world closer to the G20’s vision of instant, traceable and predictable payments, while strengthening fraud controls and compliance checks as part of the process.
New expectations, old systems
Despite the clear advantages, real-time adoption remains difficult for many traditional banks. In fact, our research shows that 60% of banking IT leaders admit their existing infrastructure struggles to keep pace with evolving standards.
Banks continue to route international payments through legacy rails – built on batch processing, manual reconciliation and fragmented workflows.
This can lead to failed payments that require time consuming manual intervention, often at a cost of $50–$60 per transaction, as well as tying up liquidity in slower settlement cycles.
Ultimately, many legacy systems are fundamentally incompatible with instant settlement, which require continuous processing, automated screening and real-time visibility across the entire transaction lifecycle.
Additionally, whilst short term temporary fixes like translation tools can help institutions respond to immediate demands, they often create new problems such as adding complexity, reducing transparency, and making it harder to both adapt and scale.
Here is a summary of the Swift standards changes happening in 2026 and beyond
- In November 2026, Payment messages must include structured or hybrid postal addresses. Fully unstructured address fields will be rejected
Banks must therefore standardise customer address data. If this is not practical within your core systems then this can be controlled in Aquila
- Annual “Standards Releases” (SR2026, SR2027…)
In November 2026, SR2026 will:
- Enforces structured data rules (addresses, party info)
- Refines ISO 20022 message fields
- Aligns trade finance and payments messaging
What to expect in SR2027 and beyond
- Further removal of legacy optional/unstructured fields
- More mandatory structured elements
- Deprecation of additional MT formats in favour of MX
- Beyond SR2026, SWIFT is also extending ISO 20022 into:
- Case management & investigations (tracking payment issues)
- Cash reporting & liquidity management
- Trade finance messaging
- Securities processing
- End of “coexistence mindset”
From January 2026, Swift’s In-flow Translation Service (MX → MT) becomes chargeable and is being actively discouraged with additional pricing increases and additional rules. Translation is expected to fade out between 2027-2028 so plan for its imminent decommissioning.
How Aqua Global supports real-time readiness
Moving to real-time doesn’t necessarily mean replacing core systems overnight., but it does require a different approach to be able to:
- See every payment in real time
- Provide highly configurable Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) to restrict system access to authorized users
- Automate compliance requirements such as AML, sanctions, FATF16 and beneficiary account checks to aid instant payments
- Automate cash and liquidity monitoring, matching and reconciliation
- Automate and control any exceptions via audited incident management processes
- Maintain control and auditability across multiple payment rails
This is where flexible orchestration becomes critical. Aqua Global’s message orchestration platform, Aquila, integrates seamlessly with existing systems, providing a single layer of control and visibility. It also has a number of additional modules that can perform cash and liquidity monitoring, matching, reconciliation and reporting
Rather than adding another point solution, Aquila offers a unified view into every transaction, automating key processes and providing the visibility and auditability needed to settle transactions in real-time. Aquila can replace siloed solutions for reconciliations and matching etc., which will simplify architecture, as well as backup and recovery requirements.
Data matching, exception handling and reporting becomes seamless with support for ISO 20022 adoption and continuous updates to support evolving compliance requirements.
That means:
- Payments can be monitored end-to-end now and in the future
- Exceptions can be identified and resolved earlier
- Reporting and compliance are easier to support
Importantly, this approach allows banks to modernise incrementally without disrupting existing infrastructure.
Summary:
Real-time payments aren’t just another upgrade. They represent a shift about how payments are expected to work. The pressure is coming from all sides, customers, regulators and competitors and it’s not going away.
Upcoming requirements include, Swift structured addresses (due November 2026) and the adoption of swift Case Management (by November 2027).
Institutions that invest in the right operational foundations will be able to respond quickly and confidently and those that delay will be left playing catch-up.
For more on how the industry is adapting to market shifts and regulatory scrutiny, see our survey of 150 UK and European banking leaders here: From Compliance Burden to Competitive Advantage
