Swift joins hands with 17 banks to launch a blockchain ledger pilot for tokenized deposits

SWIFT says its blockchain-based financial message ledger is ready for initial use

This marks an important step in providing banks with a more time-free way to transfer value across borders. After nine months of development, SWIFT announced that 17 large institutions are preparing to use tokenized bank deposits for cross-border payment pilots on the platform, and expects to enter the initial controlled launch phase thereafter.

According to SWIFT, participating banks include HSBC, Citibank, BNP Paribas, UBS, ANZ, DBS and Standard Chartered Bank. They will test how tokenized deposits can support round-the-clock cross-border payments, including overnight and weekend transactions, while maintaining compliance, credit, risk and control standards built into existing payment processes.

Key Points

After nine months of development, SWIFT\'s blockchain ledger is said to be ready for initial use.

17 banks plan to use tokenized bank deposits for cross-border transfer pilots on the SWIFT platform.

The initiative aims to achieve round-the-clock settlement and extend payment availability beyond traditional bank business hours.

SWIFT emphasized that the initiative aims to preserve existing compliance, credit, risk and control requirements.

SWIFT said it will further expand the functionality and usability of the ledger after an initial limited roll-out.

From messaging to tokenized deposits

SWIFT\'s role in global finance is primarily connectivity: its interbank messaging network connects more than 11500 banks and financial institutions in more than 200 countries and regions. While SWIFT already supports fast messaging on its existing tracks-SWIFT says 75% of payments reach the receiving bank in 10 minutes, usually in seconds-the focus of this new attempt is on what to do when settlement needs to be run without time constraints.

The company\'s announcement positions the ledger as an extension of SWIFT\'s \"resilient global platform\" designed to help \"regulated digital assets\" flow across borders faster and with greater flexibility. Thierry Chilosi, chief commercial officer at SWIFT, said in an announcement that the ledger allows tokenized value to flow internationally while maintaining the same levels of flexibility, security and compliance expected by global finance.

For market participants, the practical significance lies not only in using blockchain, but also in achieving the target operating outcome: making payment processes less dependent on bank working hours while maintaining the established governance structure.

What the pilot means for cross-border payments

According to SWIFT, the pilot aims to test cross-border payment capabilities using tokenized deposits without abandoning the compliance and risk framework embedded in the current process. This emphasis is important because many tokenization projects face the same core issue: how to integrate new settlement mechanisms into existing regulatory and institutional controls.

SWIFT said the ledger will allow participating banks to support cross-border payments 24/7 and will explicitly include overnight and weekend activities. This directly solves long-standing operational bottlenecks in traditional payment infrastructures-receipt times and settlement windows may limit response speeds, especially for time-sensitive transfers.

This also puts SWIFT at the center of broader changes in financial infrastructure: Banks are increasingly exploring tokenized assets and settlements, but they want this evolution to occur within trusted, regulated systems, rather than as an isolated experiment.

Wider tokenized settlement drives

SWIFT\'s move comes at a time when a series of parallel developments among major financial players suggest that tokenized deposits and securities infrastructure are regaining momentum.

Previously, a banking consortium including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, Barclays Bank, Bank of New York Mellon and Wells Fargo announced plans to launch a tokenized deposit network in the first half of 2027. The clearing house will operate the network, connecting traditional payment tracks with digital asset infrastructure to enable round-the-clock settlement.

In the market arena, the New York Stock Exchange has previously partnered with tokenization platform Securitize to build blockchain-based infrastructure for tokenized stocks and exchange-traded funds. In addition, Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, also announced plans to build a tokenized securities trading venue, aiming to achieve round-the-clock trading, instant settlement, stablecoin-based financing and on-chain settlement.

Taken together, these efforts suggest that the industry as a whole is trying to reduce the friction between \"tokenized\" workflows and the reality of regulated financial institutions \'operations. The SWIFT pilot is another data point in this transformation process, not least because SWIFT is not an issuer or a single market venue-it is the messaging backbone of global interbank communications.

Next step after initial launch

SWIFT said it plans to expand ledger functionality and availability after the initial controlled launch phase. This order is important: Controlled rollouts often help organizations verify technical performance and governance requirements before scaling up participation or expanding use cases.

For users from money management teams to payment operators, the next milestone may focus on actual interoperability-that is, how efficient tokenized deposit transfers are between participating institutions and how smoothly ledgers are integrated into existing operational and compliance processes. Investors and builders in digital asset infrastructure also need to pay attention to whether SWIFT\'s ledger will become a repeatable baseline for cross-border settlements beyond the pilot population, or will remain just a narrow-use experiment before large-scale adoption.

In the short term, the most important question is whether the pilot can demonstrate that round-the-clock tokenized cross-border payments can coexist on a large scale with existing financial controls. If SWIFT\'s extensions follow the same logic, the ledger could become an important bridge between traditional messaging standards and modern commercial settlement expectations.