Swift moves shared ledger pilot toward live cross-border payments

Swift, a Brussels-based financial messaging cooperative, is moving its blockchain-based shared ledger from concept toward live use, with 17 global banks preparing to pilot cross-border payments using tokenized deposits.

Swift said the ledger is ready for initial use, creating an orchestration layer that allows participating banks to move tokenized deposits for clients around the clock, including overnight and on weekends, before final settlement through existing systems. The approach is designed to improve liquidity efficiency and payment availability while preserving the compliance, credit, risk and control standards banks already apply to payment processing.

Participating banks include ANZ, BNP Paribas, BNY, Citi, DBS, First Abu Dhabi Bank, FirstRand Bank Limited, HSBC, Itaú Unibanco, Lloyds Bank, Mashreq, MUFG Bank, OCBC, Standard Chartered, UBS, UOB and Wells Fargo.

The pilot marks the first use case for the ledger, which Swift announced last year and developed with feedback from international financial institutions in nine months. The effort comes as banks, payment networks and fintechs are racing to determine how tokenized money can support faster, more flexible value movement without fragmenting the global financial system.

Building on trusted rails

Swift emphasized that the shared ledger is not intended to replace existing payment infrastructure. Instead, the cooperative noted, it extends Swift’s network by helping banks validate and synchronize interbank payment commitments involving bank-issued tokenized deposits.

That distinction is important. Much of the recent attention around digital money has focused on stablecoins, cryptocurrencies and central bank digital currency experiments. Swift’s effort points to another path: using blockchain technology to modernize bank-to-bank payment coordination while keeping regulated financial institutions at the center of the process.

For corporate users, the potential benefit is practical rather than theoretical. Cross-border payments often remain constrained by time zones, banking hours and liquidity management challenges. Always-on tokenized deposits could give treasurers better visibility into cash flows and help banks support clients that operate continuously across markets.

The pilot also reinforces Swift’s broader role in cross-border payment modernization. The cooperative said its network connects more than 11,500 banking and securities organizations, market infrastructures and corporate customers in more than 200 countries and territories.

Connecting digital and traditional systems

Swift mentioned that the shared ledger also addresses a major challenge in digital asset development: interoperability. Banks have been testing tokenized deposits and distributed ledger technology in multiple markets, but isolated systems can create new silos if they do not connect with existing payment rails and standards.

By embedding the ledger within Swift’s global infrastructure, participating banks can test tokenized payment capabilities while maintaining ties to familiar operating models. Swift said the ledger’s functionality and availability will expand after the initial controlled go-live phase.

The initiative, the cooperative added, could also create a foundation for future use cases, including programmable money and agentic commerce. For now, however, the near-term initiative is more concrete: major banks are testing whether blockchain can make cross-border payments more available, efficient and transparent without asking the financial system to start over.

Notice to readers: These are archived articles. Contact information, links and other details may be out of date. We regret any inconvenience.