Project Keystone Unlocking dataanalytics for ISO20022 payments Contents Acronyms CPMICommittee on Payments and Market InfrastructuresISOInternational Standards OrganisationRTGSReal-time gross settlementPSOPayment system operatorG20Group of 20IPSInstant payment systemBICBank identifier codeLEILegal entity identifier Executivesummary Project Keystone, an initiativeby the BIS Innovation HubLondon Centre in collaborationwith the Bank of England,has developed an analyticalprototype for ISO 20022payment messages. This project addresses the needs of currentand future adopters of ISO 20022 byfacilitating advanced analytical capabilities.Keystone enhances the harmonised use ofISO 20022 standards, allowing for consistentanalysis of payment data across jurisdictions. Keystone is designed to work withwholesale payment system data,as the payments within it are typicallybetween financial institutions andcorporates. This enables beneficialinsights into topics such as liquidityand economic forecasting. By design,Keystone restricts the access of anypotential personal data included inpayment messages, allowing its usersto view the results of validation checks,but not the underlying data. The prototype achieves thisthrough two key components: a datatransformation and storage platformfor ISO 20022 payment messages,and analytics modules for economic,financial and compliance analysis. While these analytics componentsare effective even with minimalimplementation of ISO 20022, theprototype showcases the full potentialof more comprehensive ISO 20022implementations. Project Keystone demonstrates thesignificant benefits of ISO 20022 foranalytical purposes. The prototypeenables ad hoc analysis by paymentsystem operators (PSOs) using pre-defined analytical modules designedto answer key questions surroundingpayment systems operations. Thisapproach aims to unlock future usecases by providing a well structuredfoundation upon which they may beeasily built. As central banks and payment systemoperators continue to transition toISO 20022, Project Keystone serves toengage the central banking communitywith a prototype to show how theanalysis of ISO 20022 might beconducted, and the value that canbe gained. The Keystone prototype includescomponents that can be utilised injurisdictions with varying levels ofISO 20022 adoption. Projectintroduction The expanding use of ISO 20022 standards forpayment messages in real-time gross settlement(RTGS) systems means that many central banks willbe migrating to this standard in the coming years. While the enhancements to the datastructure provide benefits, they alsocan lead to additional complexity inparsing and analysing these data.Keystone can assist central banksand PSOs in this respect, easing thework needed to access and analysethis key information. To achieve these goals,Project Keystone sought toachieve two key objectives:► Create an ISO 20022 data parsingand storage platform.► Create analysis modules in theareas of liquidity management andliquidity risk, economic monitoring,alignment with the Bank forInternational Settlements (BIS)Committee on Payments andMarket Infrastructures (CPMI) ISOharmonisation requirements (CPMI(2023)), and fraudulent payments. Seventy-eight per cent of paymentsystem operators (PSOs) have eitherimplemented ISO 20022 or haveconcrete plans to implement itin their systems (CPMI (2024)). Keystone has sought to developa prototype ISO 20022 analyticsplatform. It is intended to enable thecentral banking community to engagewith the prototype, learning fromthe implementation and design ofKeystone, and potentially using it toaccelerate their own development efforts. ISO 20022 provides several improvementsover prior standards. First, it requiresmore structure to the data containedwithin a payment message. For example, where prior standardsmay have allowed for a corporatepostal address to be a single dataelement, ISO 20022 enables theindividual components of an address,such as town, postal code and streetname, to be separate data elements.This enhanced granularity can reduceambiguity in payment processingsystems, such as compliance screeningtools, potentially leading to an increasein automated payment processing. Thesecond area of improvement is relatedto the inclusion of additional dataelements within the payment message. Project Keystone has developed ananalytics toolkit for ISO 20022 paymentmessages. Harmonising the use of ISO20022 data is a key deliverable underthe G20 cross-border paymentsprogramme (FSB (2023)). Keystoneshows the potential benefits of theseharmonisation efforts, by creating toolsfor similar analysis of payment data tobe performed across jurisdictions. As much of the focus to date aroundISO 20022 has been focused on theimplementation of the standard intopayment systems, Keystone serves tobuild on these efforts by allowing PSOsto more easily realise the benefits ofthe ISO 20022 standard. Additionally, asinternational harmonisation of the useof I