Swift announced on Thursday that its blockchain-based ledger is ready for initial use, with 17 banks, including HSBC, Citi, BNY, and UBS, preparing to pilot live cross-border transactions using tokenized deposits. The ledger lets banks move customer funds around the clock, including overnight and on weekends, by giving them a shared layer to settle tokenized deposits before final settlement completes on existing systems. It’s the first live use case for infrastructure Swift built over nine months with input from banks across six continents.
How the Ledger Moves Money for Banks
The ledger acts as an orchestration layer for bank-issued tokenized deposits, letting banks move funds for customers without routing every step through traditional settlement windows. Banks achieve faster money movement and improved liquidity efficiency while maintaining compliance, credit, and risk controls already built into their payment systems.
Seventeen banks are lined up for the pilot: 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 says its existing network already moves the equivalent of world GDP every two to three days across more than 200 markets.
Thierry Chilosi, Chief Business Officer at Swift, said the ledger extends the trust of established finance into digital money, adding that it lays the groundwork for future innovation in programmable money and agentic commerce. Mahesh Kini, Global Head of Cash Management at Standard Chartered, said the bank is combining tokenized deposits with its global network to deliver instant, always-on money movement for clients.
What This Means for Banks and Their Customers
For banks, this is a low-risk way to test blockchain rails without giving up the settlement guarantees regulators expect. For their customers, the practical upside is fewer delays on cross-border payments, especially transfers that currently sit idle over a weekend. It’s also a signal that tokenized deposits, not just public cryptocurrencies, are becoming a serious piece of how banks plan to move money.
Swift’s pilot is one of a growing list of moves by traditional finance into blockchain rails, which we track in our crypto and blockchain news coverage. Swift’s move also fits a wider push across the industry to settle international payments in seconds instead of days, and our breakdown of the fastest blockchain networks for cross-border transfers covers how other networks are tackling the same problem.
What to Watch Next
Swift says the ledger will expand in functionality and availability after this initial controlled go-live phase, though the company hasn’t set a public date for broader rollout. Whether more banks join the pilot and how quickly Swift moves from testing to production use will show how fast tokenized deposits move from pilot to standard practice.
What this means for you: If you’ve ever waited days for an international bank transfer to clear, this pilot aims to fix exactly that by using the same kind of technology that powers cryptocurrencies, running inside the traditional banking system.
