HSBC, Citi, DBS among 17 banks to pilot Swift's blockchain ledger

The pilot will enable participating banks to support round-the-clock cross-border payments using tokenised deposits while settling transactions through existing payment systems

Seventeen global banks, including HSBC, Citi, DBS, BNP Paribas, Standard Chartered, MUFG Bank, UBS and Wells Fargo, are preparing to pilot live cross-border transactions using Swift's blockchain-based ledger, enabling them to support 24/7 cross-border payments with tokenised deposits.

 

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

 

Swift said the blockchain-based ledger is ready for initial use and will provide participating banks with a secure orchestration layer for bank-issued tokenised deposits on their own ledgers. The platform will enable banks to move funds for customers, including overnight and on weekends, before completing final settlement through existing systems.

   

According to the global financial messaging cooperative, the ledger is the first use case for the platform that it announced last year and was designed and built with feedback from international financial institutions in nine months.

 

"With our new ledger capability, we're extending the trust and stability of established finance into the frontiers of digital money. It allows tokenised value to move across borders with the velocity and flexibility modern commerce expects, while maintaining the same high levels of resilience, security and compliance global finance requires," said Thierry Chilosi, chief business officer at Swift.

 

"The strong support from banks shows the practical value of this approach — one that will help scale benefits globally while creating a foundation for future innovation in areas like programmable money and agentic commerce," Chilosi added.

 

Swift said banks will benefit from an improved client experience and greater global liquidity efficiency without compromising the compliance, credit, risk and control standards embedded in existing payment processing.

 

The cooperative said the ledger will expand in functionality and availability after the initial controlled go-live phase. It added that the platform builds on improvements already made to its existing payment rails, with 75 per cent of payments on the network reaching beneficiary banks within 10 minutes, and often in seconds.