ISO 20022 is a widely adopted international standard for financial communications and data exchanges between financial institutions and payment systems. It provides a common language, improving the quality of data shared about customers, enabling better customer experiences, faster payments, more reliability, security, and cost savings. Open banking, also known as PSD2 Second Payment Services Directive, requires banks to release their data in a standardized format, allowing for data sharing among institutions and third-party aggregators like Intuit's Mint. This enables account aggregation, global payments, clearing/settlement of securities, and real-time data platforms, providing numerous revenue opportunities for financial institutions. Implementing ISO 20022 is not easy, but it can be achieved strategically by adapting infrastructure and application systems to create an architecture with ISO 20022 capabilities. The adoption of ISO 20022 and open banking presents opportunities for financial institutions to improve customer experiences, gain valuable data, and deliver better services, but also requires a right data platform and understanding of local compliance demands.