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The settlement calendar is changing. A timeline for treasury.
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Settlement that used to take up to three days can now complete in minutes. The calendars that govern the world’s largest payment systems are now catching up.
None of these changes arrive all at once. They land on published timetables, one market infrastructure at a time. That makes them easy to underestimate individually and hard to ignore together.
Here’s a timeline of extended settlement hours and related changes: what’s confirmed, what’s proposed and what each one means for your treasury in practice.
Extended settlement hours: the timeline at a glance
October 2025: instant euro payments become the default
The EU Instant Payments Regulation required eurozone payment providers to send instant euro payments, at no higher cost than a standard transfer. They also had to offer verification of payee, which checks the beneficiary name against the account before the money moves.
The early data shows what this does to liquidity. According to the ECB’s TARGET Services Annual Report 2025, overnight euro liquidity held in TIPS rose from €32.3bn in September 2025 to €88.8bn in December 2025.
What it means in practice: Banks are positioning liquidity before it’s needed, because payments no longer wait for the morning. Your liquidity management will need to do the same. The ECB’s 2026 Eurosystem comprehensive payments strategy also notes that corporates can only take advantage of instant payments if ERP and treasury systems are integrated.
November 2025: ISO 20022 for cross-border payments
On 22 November 2025, the coexistence period between Swift’s legacy MT messages and ISO 20022 ended for cross-border payment instructions between financial institutions.
What it means in practice: Richer remittance and party data now survives the full journey of a cross-border payment. That data is only valuable if your systems can read it. Reconciliation, sanctions screening and cash application all get easier when structured data arrives intact, and harder to explain when it’s truncated on your side.
2026: tokenized settlement moves from experiment toward infrastructure
Two developments are worth watching. Swift launched a live pilot of its blockchain-based shared ledger in July 2026, with 17 banks moving tokenized deposits around the clock before final settlement on existing rails.
Separately, Project Agorá, led by the BIS with several central banks and a group of commercial banks, has been testing cross-border settlement on tokenized central bank reserves and tokenized commercial bank deposits.
What it means in practice: Not much changes in your workflows yet, and that’s the point. Tokenized settlement is arriving as infrastructure underneath the systems banks already run. The treasurer’s question isn’t which asset class the money touched. It’s whether money can move at 2am and whether you can prove how it moved.
September 2027: CHAPS opens at 01:30
The Bank of England has confirmed that from September 2027, CHAPS settlement will open at 01:30, Monday to Friday, rather than 06:00. That adds four and a half hours to the start of every sterling settlement day.
What it means in practice: Sterling flows that used to wait for the morning can settle overnight. If your positions are still struck at the previous day’s close, they’ll be out of date before your team logs in. Funding decisions for UK entities will increasingly need to be made, or at least prepared, before 06:00.
2028 or 2029: Fedwire adds Sundays
In October 2025, the Federal Reserve announced that the Fedwire Funds Service and the National Settlement Service will add Sundays and weekday holidays. Fedwire will run 22 hours a day, six days a week. The start date is no earlier than 2028, and Fed Financial Services expects 2028 or 2029.
Use of the extra days will be voluntary. The Fed has described the change as a possible step toward seven-day operation, which would need a separate proposal and public comment.
What it means in practice: US dollar wires can settle on Sundays and on weekday holidays like Columbus Day. That shortens the gap between Friday’s close and Monday’s open, which is where many liquidity shortfalls and missed investment windows sit today.
2029 and 2031: CHAPS moves toward near-24x7
The Bank of England’s May 2026 consultation proposes weekend settlement, most likely on Sundays, plus some UK bank holidays, from 2029 at the earliest. A further extension from 2031 at the earliest would bring CHAPS to 22 hours a day, Sunday to Friday. No decisions have been made.
What it means in practice: Plan for a sterling market that rarely closes. Treasury policies that assume a weekend pause, from investment sweeps to approval chains, will need to be rewritten for a calendar that no longer has one.
What doesn’t change
Batch payments aren’t going away. Most corporate payment value still moves through existing rails on existing schedules, and it will for years.
What changes is the set of flows where timing has economic value: funding a shortfall, placing excess cash and settling a cross-border obligation after the cut-off. Those are the flows worth redesigning first, and the ones where the cost of an assembled treasury stack shows up fastest.
What to do with this timeline
Three practical steps hold up regardless of which dates move:
- Map your flows to the calendar. Identify which of your payments, sweeps and funding moves would benefit from settling outside today’s hours.
- Move your controls ahead of the payment. When settlement is final in moments, checks that run after the money moves are too late.
- Decide how much should run without a person. Some workflows, like overnight sweeps, can run on their own inside policy. Others should still ask first.
Ripple Treasury is built for this calendar. Adaptable solutions across liquidity, forecasting, payments and netting, connected to 1,000+ financial institutions through 300+ pre-built bank connectors (Ripple Treasury ClearConnect data), with GSmart agents working inside your policy at the autonomy you choose. GSmart works inside your environment: your data isn’t shared with third parties or used to train models elsewhere, and every output is traceable and auditable.
See how Ripple Treasury runs the treasury day before your team logs in →
Sources
- European Central Bank, TARGET Services Annual Report 2025 (June 2026)
- European Central Bank, Eurosystem comprehensive payments strategy (2026) [add link]
- European Union, Regulation (EU) 2024/886 on instant credit transfers in euro
- Bank of England, Extending RTGS and CHAPS settlement hours: next steps towards near 24x7 settlement (May 2026)
- Federal Reserve Financial Services, Federal Reserve announces intent to expand operating days for Fedwire Funds Service and National Settlement Service (October 2025)
- Swift, Global financial community completes switch to ISO 20022 (November 2025)
- Swift, Collaborative innovation: bringing Swift’s shared blockchain-based ledger to life (2026)
- Bank for International Settlements, Project Agorá
Frequently asked questions
The Bank of England has confirmed that from September 2027, CHAPS settlement will open at 01:30, Monday to Friday, instead of 06:00.
The Federal Reserve has said Fedwire Funds Service will add Sundays and weekday holidays no earlier than 2028. Fed Financial Services expects the change in 2028 or 2029, and use of the extra days will be voluntary.
No. Most corporate payment value still moves through existing rails on existing schedules. Extended settlement hours matter most for flows where timing has economic value.
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