Swift MT and ISO messages are the basic message formats used all across the financial world in most of the payment systems. Yes there are notable exceptions like NACHA or some country specific message formats but if you need to interface with or implement some payment system that at some point connects to SWIFT you cannot escape the Swift message standards.
There so many specifications and so many rules and exceptions that you can go crazy if you do not have some helpers along the way. Bellow I will talk about some resources I use.
First is a nice one man blog called Paiementor.com
This is a nice resource that explains the most used formats in a nice way. Go directly to the payment messages section .
He covers very nicely:
- SEPA Credit Transfer Messages
- SEPA Instant Credit Transfer Messages
- SEPA Core Direct Debit Messages
- SEPA B2B Direct Debit Messages
- ISO 20022 Standard Messages
- SWIFT MT Messages
It is not an exhaustive description and lacks some of the message formats but is a nice summary of the Swift messages documentation that is hundreds of pages long.
Second resource I use is http://www.iotafinance.com
This resource contains lot’s of financial definitions, articles , tutorials and so on. If you want to focus strictly on Swift message formats go directly to Swift MT messages section.
- SWIFT ISO 15022 – Message categories
- SWIFT ISO 15022 – Message types in category (here you find the description of MT message formats)
- SWIFT ISO 15022 – Qualifiers
- SWIFT ISO 15022 – Codes
- SWIFT ISO 15022 – Data Source Schemes (DSS)
And yes there is always the Swift MT message manuals and the big ISO 20022 standard page https://www.iso20022.org/iso-20022-message-definitions