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We need to step back from our own regional bias of what an address is to understand the cross-border address data problem exposed in payments.
Most people reading this will reside in a developed western country that typically follows a government-regulated postal address standard with the format of premise, street, city, state and post-code.
What most people do not know is this is not the case for most regions in the world. Across the 250 countries and territories, there are over 130 different address formats. There are only about a half-dozen countries with government-regulated postal authorities (i.e., US USPS, Canada SERP, UK Royal Mail etc.).
In many countries, addresses are more of a description of a location – and this description can be based on a range of attributes including; neighborhood/locality names, points of interest, or even directions to a location.
For example, in India, there are at least 7 different formats for entering an address depending on the region of the country you are from. In Germany, the premise number comes after the street name in the first line of address.
Although the adoption of ISO 20022 is well designed and a significant improvement, it will expose challenges with address data availability, data quality, and standards.
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