Swift activates blockchain ledger for 24/7 payments

SWIFT announced on Wednesday that its blockchain-based ledger is ready for initial use, with 17 major banks from six continents preparing to pilot live cross-border payments using tokenized deposits — a move that could reshape how money moves between countries outside traditional banking hours.marketsmedia+1

Nine Months From Concept to Activation

The cooperative, which connects more than 11,000 banks across over 200 countries, moved from announcing the ledger at its Sibos conference last year to activating it in just nine months. The shared ledger provides participating banks with a secure orchestration layer for bank-issued tokenized deposits on their own ledgers, enabling them to move funds for customers overnight and on weekends before completing final settlement through existing systems.theasianbanker+2

The 17 pilot banks include Citi Citigroup Inc. ↗ 1.00%, HSBC ↗ 2.07%, UBS ↗ 1.55%, BNP Paribas, Wells Fargo ↗ 1.41%, BNY The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation ↗ 2.86%, DBS, Standard Chartered, ANZ, MUFG Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Inc. ↗ 0.62%, Lloyds Bank, Itaú Unibanco ↗ 1.23%, OCBC Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation Limited, UOB United Overseas Bank Limited ↗ 4.26%, First Abu Dhabi Bank, FirstRand Bank, and Mashreq.weex+1

Breaking Traditional Banking Hours

"With our new ledger capability, we're extending the trust and stability of established finance into the frontiers of digital money," said Thierry Chilosi, SWIFT's Chief Business Officer. "It allows tokenised value to move across borders with the velocity and flexibility modern commerce expects, while maintaining the same high levels of resiliency, security, and compliance global finance requires."marketsmedia+1

Tokenized deposits are digital representations of customers' account balances that can be transferred over blockchain rails. The system maintains existing compliance, credit, and risk controls while enabling round-the-clock transaction capability — a departure from the limitations of traditional banking hours that have long slowed international payments.theasianbanker+1

Foundation for Future Innovation

SWIFT noted that 75 percent of payments on its network already reach beneficiary banks within 10 minutes, and the new ledger builds on those improvements while creating a foundation for future capabilities such as programmable money and agentic commerce. The ledger will expand in functionality and availability after the initial controlled go-live phase.theasianbanker+1

Manish Kohli, Head of Global Payments Solutions at HSBC, called the launch "a positive step towards making them work the way our clients' businesses operate today — in real time, across time zones, and without artificial cut-offs."theasianbanker