About pacs008

pacs008 is a Python toolkit for teams that need to generate, validate, and ship ISO 20022 payment messages with less manual repair work. It helps payment teams catch bad data before release.

What it does

• Generates XML for pacs.008 and related pacs message definitions.
• Validates data and XML against schemas.
• Exposes a FastAPI service for automated workflows.
• Provides a CLI for local runs and CI pipelines.
• Supports structured data sources including CSV, JSON, JSONL, SQLite, and Parquet.
• Validates IBAN (75 countries, ISO 7064 checksum) and BIC (ISO 9362) identifiers.
• Cleans payment data for SWIFT compliance with transliteration and field-length control.
• Processes large datasets in configurable batches to limit memory use.
• Ships a Docker image for containerised API deployment.

Who it is for

• Payment operations teams
• Platform engineers building internal payment processing infrastructure
• Migration programmes moving to ISO 20022
• Compliance and QA teams validating outbound payment messages

Validation

Multiple validation layers run before any XML is written:

• JSON Schema validation against 20 message-specific schemas.
• IBAN format and checksum verification covering 75 countries supported by the toolkit.
• BIC structure and country-code validation per ISO 9362.
• XSD validation of generated XML against official ISO 20022 schemas.

Security

pacs008 applies defence in depth across every layer of the processing pipeline:

• XXE prevention via defusedxml for all XML parsing operations.
• Path-traversal protection with strict directory allowlists.
• PII masking in structured JSON logs to support GDPR and PCI DSS compliance.
• SQL-injection prevention with strict table-name sanitisation for SQLite sources.

2026 readiness

pacs008 is built around the operational deadlines and data-quality requirements relevant to 2026:

• Structured and hybrid postal-address handling for CBPR+ and scheme migrations.
• Stronger validation of debtor, creditor, and agent data quality.
• Version-aware generation across older and current pacs.008 revisions.
• Automation paths that fit CI, batch operations, and internal payment services.

Operational focus

pacs008 goes beyond message-definition reference to support operational implementation:

• Generate XML from real source data.
• Validate before delivery.
• Model payment chains and downstream formats.
• Make scheme-specific changes testable in code.

Implementation checklist

Use this list to keep rollout work simple and repeatable.

Keep each release small, testable, and easy to trace.

• Pick the right message family for the business event before writing templates.
• Validate business data before XML generation so that schema errors are not the first signal.
• Treat BIC, IBAN, remittance, and postal-address quality as a release criterion, not a later cleanup.
• Regression-test each scheme or bank rule change with representative payment data.