South Africa’s financial sector has taken another huge step towards modernising the country’s payment ecosystem.

This comes after the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) on Thursday announced the adoption of a new global messaging standard by its domestic real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system, participant banks and other financial market infrastructures (FMIs).

South Africa is one of the first countries on the continent to adopt the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) financial messaging standard ISO 20022, which is expected to underpin all high-value payments in reserve currencies by 2025.

In a statement, the central bank said the ISO 20022 – being driven through the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) – will introduce a harmonised message exchange mechanism for payments across the globe, allowing for richer, better quality data in payment processing and settlements.

“SWIFT has set a 2025 deadline by which all users in its network must have transitioned to this