Swift Starts Blockchain Ledger Pilot With 17 Banks For 24/7 Payments

Swift has moved its blockchain-based ledger into initial use, giving 17 banks a live pilot for 24/7 cross-border payments using tokenized deposits.

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

The ledger acts as an orchestration layer for bank-issued tokenized deposits on participating institutions’ own ledgers. Funds can move for customers overnight and on weekends, while final settlement still runs through existing systems.

Swift built the project in nine months after first outlining the shared ledger plan last year. The first use case targets real-time bank-to-bank value movement without moving compliance, credit, risk and control standards outside the regulated banking stack.

Banks Push Tokenized Deposits Into Payments

The pilot moves Swift’s tokenized-deposit project from design work into live transaction testing, putting global banks closer to blockchain-based payment infrastructure without turning the system into a public crypto rail.

HSBC is connecting its Tokenised Deposit Service to the new ledger, while Citi, Standard Chartered, DBS, UBS and other banks are testing how the system can support always-on payments, liquidity management and cross-border transaction visibility.

Tokenized deposits remain commercial bank liabilities. That makes the structure different from stablecoins, where the user depends on an issuer’s reserve model, redemption rules and market liquidity. Banks are using deposit tokens to keep the legal and balance-sheet treatment of commercial bank money while upgrading settlement availability and programmability.

The same institutional shift was already visible when Swift banks backed crypto rails for cross-border payments earlier this year. The new pilot gives that plan a production path with named banks and live transaction testing.

Tokenized Money Race Accelerates

The Swift pilot lands as major banks build parallel tokenized-deposit networks. JPMorgan, Citi and other large U.S. banks have also backed a 2027 tokenized deposit network designed to move regulated bank money on faster settlement rails.

The strategy puts banks in direct competition with stablecoin payment infrastructure without forcing them to issue public crypto tokens. Swift’s role is to connect tokenized bank deposits across institutions and jurisdictions, rather than replace the correspondent banking network entirely.