Banks are raising the bar. Here’s how your ERP can keep up

Swift and the European Payments Council (EPC) are phasing out fully unstructured addresses in payment messages based on the ISO 20022 standard. Every payment will need to include at least the town and country of the parties, in dedicated fields. 

The original deadline was November 2026. Both Swift and the EPC have since postponed it, and new dates are expected later this year. But the direction is unchanged. Some banks and countries are keeping earlier deadlines, and some already require structured addresses. Those banks may reject or delay payments that don’t meet their requirements. In July 2026, Swift reported that almost 60 percent of payment messages still contained unstructured addresses. 

Swift is clear about who owns this: you source the addresses of your suppliers, store them in your ERP or treasury system and send them to the bank when you pay. 

In the euro area, banks have also checked since October 2025 that the payee’s name matches the account number before a transfer goes through. This is called Verification of Payee. 

Many banks, many formats 

For a company with one bank in one country, this is manageable. For international companies it quickly gets complex. Each bank has its own file formats, connection methods, local requirements and timelines. Expecting your ERP to handle all of that directly is not realistic. 

A strong core with a specialist connection to your banks 

We believe the future of ERP is a strong core platform combined with carefully selected specialist solutions. That is why we work with Cobase: 

• IFS Cloud or NetSuite remains your core business platform for finance, projects, assets, service and supply chain. 

• Cobase gives you one standardised connection to your banks. It transforms and structures files between your ERP and your banks, both outgoing payments and incoming bank statements, whatever format each bank requires. Cobase connects to more than 300 banks in over 90 countries. 

• Addovation makes sure the complete solution works together, from both a business and a technical perspective. We stay with you after go-live through Addovation Engage, our application management service. 

• You send and receive payments electronically. 

• Bank transactions reach your ERP automatically, several times a day. 

• Each transaction is matched correctly: supplier, customer, fees, interest or other. 

• Your supplier and customer records hold structured addresses, with at least town and country in separate fields. 

Is your payment flow ready for structured addresses? 

Book a 30-minute readiness check. We’ll review your supplier address data and bank formats together, so you know what needs fixing and which deadlines apply to your banks. 

Book a readiness check