ISO 20022
The international standard for financial messaging, providing a common data model and structured message definitions across payments, cash management, securities, trade services and cards. Its defining property is richer, more structured data than the legacy formats it replaces.
Why it matters for autonomous finance
If FIX is the trading rail, ISO 20022 is the payment and clearing rail — and this register had the first without the second. An agent that moves money touches ISO 20022, and the standard's structured remittance and party data is the closest existing analogue to carrying purpose alongside an instruction. Anyone specifying what an agent decision record should carry should look at how ISO 20022 models parties, purpose codes and structured references before inventing fields.
What it does not cover
A message standard, not a governance standard. It defines how an instruction is expressed, not whether the instruction was authorized. Adoption is also uneven across market infrastructures and message types, so “supports ISO 20022” from a vendor warrants a follow-up question about which messages.
No authority model, no agent identity, no decision provenance. Every entry in this register carries this section. A standard read past its scope is worse than no standard, because it produces confidence without coverage.