ISO 20022-1:2013 consists of:

• the overall description of the modelling approach;
• the overall description of the ISO 20022 Repository contents;
• a high-level description of the input to be accepted by the Registration Authority to feed/modify the Repository's DataDictionary and BusinessProcessCatalogue;
• a high-level description of the Repository output to be made publicly available by the Registration Authority.

BusinessTransactions and Message Sets complying with ISO 20022 can be used for electronic data interchange among any industry participants (financial and others), independently of any specific communication network. Network-dependent rules, such as message acknowledgement and message protection, are outside the scope of ISO 20022.