Unstructured addresses: what the Swift and EPC delay changes

Swift is due to publish its revised schedule by December 2026 at the latest. The EPC removed the 15 November 2026 date from its SEPA rulebooks, and its Payment Scheme Management Board is set to fix a new date in October 2026.

Neither Swift nor the EPC has cancelled the migration. Fully structured remains the recommended target, including for the EPC, and hybrid remains an accepted transition format in the flows that allow it.

You now have time to review supplier, employee and customer master data, fix issues at the source and test with your bank before the next cut-off date.

The pattern to watch is the fully unstructured address: one or more free-text lines where town and country are buried in the text.

When an address is transmitted in the relevant flows, teams need at least town and country to be identifiable in dedicated fields.

Historical files often mix full addresses, postcodes, country names, abbreviations and irrelevant columns.

A review keeps the transition from turning into an oversized project: you see which rows are usable, which need targeted cleanup and where to focus the effort.

Start with the files you submit to the bank, then work back to the master data sources that feed them.

The goal is to reduce rejection risk on priority flows during the transition, without rebuilding everything at once.

1. 1Identify in-scope pain.001 files and payment exports.
2. 2Find blocks or rows that are only free text.
3. 3Separate urgent fixes from cleanup that can wait.
4. 4Test a sample with your bank or payment partner.
5. 5Set a rule for new third parties created after the review.

• Swift - Structured address deadline extended (27 August 2026)
• Swift - Removal of unstructured address data
• EPC - Address format migration timeline delayed (10 September 2026)
• EPC - November 2026 end date update (27 August 2026, superseded)
• European Payments Council - Provision of addresses