The ECB attributed the shift to SWIFT's decision to delay its Standards Release 2026, which the industry requested to gain more time to prepare for the removal of unstructured postal addresses. Participants connecting to T2, T2S, TIPS and ECMS through application-to-application communication based on ISO 20022 messages should plan for user testing to start on 9 October 2026.
The Eurosystem will introduce a temporary measure in T2 allowing fully unstructured postal addresses to continue to be used in T2 RTGS messages for a limited period.