SWIFT Is Killing MT940 — Here's How to Future-Proof Your Bank Statement Pipeline

On November 22, 2025, SWIFT pulled the plug on legacy MT payment messages. Cross-border payments now run exclusively on ISO 20022's MX format. MT940 — the bank account statement format your reconciliation pipeline probably depends on — wasn't part of that first wave. It's a reporting message, not a payment message. But it's next. SWIFT has formally deprecated MT940, stopped maintaining it, and announced that disincentives for continued usage are coming. If your application parses bank statements, you need a migration plan. Here's what's actually happening, what the formats look like under the hood, and how to build a pipeline that handles both. What MT940 Actually Looks Like Before we talk about replacing MT940, let's look at what we're replacing. Here's a real MT940 statement: :20:STMT2603230001 :25:NL91ABNA0417164300 :28C:15/1 :60F:C260322EUR1234,56 :61:2603220322D45,00NTRFNONREF//ACME-INV-2026-042 :86:999~00SEPA OVERBOEKING~20KENMERK: ACME-INV-2026-042 ~21Acme Corp Ltd~22PAYMENT FOR