It seems that the “most cherished” dream of banks in Ukraine will soon come true: to see the movement of every penny in customers' accounts. After all, starting November 22, all money transfers in our country will be tracked in a new way.
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The director of the Institute for Economic Development, Oleksandr Goncharov, writes about the innovation.
In the second half of November, all international payments and settlements of SWIFT will be transferred to a single standard ISO 20022 CBPR+. In essence, this is a large-scale digital transformation of the banking sector around the world. In particular, banking systems will be synchronized, digital payments will be rebuilt, and SWIFT will be updated.
“Therefore, after November 22, 2025, a new era begins, when every capital movement becomes digitally traceable, and liquidity becomes programmable. And from January next 2026, the active integration of CBDC and tokenized assets will begin – the actual transition to a new monetary system,” the expert notes.
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From this day on, the old SWIFT MT format (banking transaction message) will no longer be used.
According to the analyst, more than 11,000 banks and financial institutions from 200+ countries will switch to a fully digital data exchange language;
The new format becomes compatible with blockchains and CBDCs, laying the foundation for the future architecture of global money.
The transition will take place in stages: on November 17, the new standard will be officially enabled, and from November 17 to 24, a global window for system synchronization will last in all regions of the planet — from Europe to Asia and the USA.
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And on November 22, the system will completely switch to working exclusively according to the new standard — ISO 20022-only.
Mr. Goncharov notes that a number of blockchain platforms are already integrated into this system. Ripple (XRP) will be used for interbank settlements and CBDC payments, Stellar (XLM) for cross-border transfers with stablecoins, Algorand (ALGO) for asset tokenization and digital bonds, Hedera (HBAR) for corporate and government registries, and Quant (QNT) will become a bridge between traditional banking systems and blockchains.
Active integration of central bank digital currencies and tokenized assets is expected as early as January 2026, marking the actual transition to a new monetary system. This marks the end of the era of paper payments and the beginning of digital control, with blockchain becoming an official part of the banking infrastructure.
At the same time, let us recall that the volume of purchases of paper money in Ukraine remains almost six times higher than online transactions for several reasons. First, paper money can be used faster, especially in periods of unpredictability. Second, some citizens do not want to keep all their savings in financial institutions. Third, people are afraid of increased financial control.
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