Commerzbank to Integrate PPI Platform, ISO 20022 for X-Border Payments

Commerzbank is updating its payments platform in Germany to execute cross-border payments.

The bank will use the Swift network to process cross-border payments and the Target 2 or Euro 1 payment systems to process high-value and urgent payments, Commerzbank said in a Thursday (April 4) press release.

To accomplish this, the bank is using PPI’s Travic-Payment Hub, according to the release. It expects to complete the migration by the end of 2025.

“With the integration of the Travic-Payment Hub from PPI AG, we will tap into the full potential of ISO 20022, and we will be able to offer our private and small business clients and corporate and institutional clients considerably better services for executing payments and important innovations for cross-border payments,” Simone Loefgen, global head of payment platforms at Commerzbank, said in the release.

The Travic-Payment Hub will enable Commerzbank to process all payment messages in Germany for its customers’ global activities in ISO 20022 format, according to the release.

The platform will also allow the bank to more easily add new products for international payments in the future, because the Travic-Payment Hub has been natively developed for these ISO formats, the release said.

By implementing the platform, Commerzbank also aims to reliably process mandates for international payments, expand existing offerings, and reduce maintenance times and secondary costs, per the release.

“The software selected by Commerzbank is well developed, futureproof and is one of the highest-performing platforms on the market,” Dr. Thorsten Völkel, CEO of PPI and head of the payments division, said in the release. “We are delighted that our product has convinced Commerzbank both from a technical and a functional perspective.”

ISO 20022 migration is increasingly top of mind for the world’s payments players because the open global standard for financial messaging is fast approaching several different and staggered industry timelines and compliance deadlines for varying market infrastructures around the globe, PYMNTS reported in March.

The adoption of ISO 20022 is making and will make significant headway in standardizing the interactions between financial institutions, aiding straight-through processing by eliminating many of the manual steps that go on behind the scenes.