Swift Tests 24/7 Token Deposits, Keeps Legacy Fiat Rails
A new Swift pilot lets major banks move tokenized deposits 24/7, but reliance on legacy systems for final fiat settlement exposes the limits of adopting crypto infrastructure piecemeal.
Swift is launching a pilot program that allows 17 banks across six continents to transfer tokenized deposits over weekends and overnight. The member-owned cooperative built the blockchain-based ledger in just nine months to address long-standing demand for continuous cross-border money movement.
The pilot carries significant institutional weight, featuring Global Systemically Important Banks like Citi, HSBC, BNY, Wells Fargo, UBS, BNP Paribas, and Standard Chartered. Their participation signals that the world's largest lenders are willing to experiment with tokenized assets on a shared network.
Despite using architecture compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine, Swift’s ledger is not a decentralized crypto network. Instead, it operates as a centralized shared environment where individual banks retain strict authority over their own assets.
The critical limitation for market professionals is that ultimate fiat settlement still depends on legacy systems restricted to standard business hours. While banks can now instruct and record transfers 24/7, the actual finality of those transactions remains bottlenecked by traditional infrastructure. For corporate treasurers and investors, this means global liquidity management improves incrementally, but true atomic settlement remains elusive.
Swift frames this hybrid approach as a way to capture the speed of crypto without sacrificing traditional oversight. “Banks benefit from improved client experience and global liquidity efficiency without compromising compliance, credit, risk and control standards embedded in existing payment processing,” Swift said.
Mahesh Kini, global head of cash management at Standard Chartered, emphasized the operational shift. “We are redefining cross-border payments with Swift’s new blockchain-based ledger—combining tokenized deposits with our global network to deliver instant, always-on money movement,” he said.
The pilot underscores a broader trend of financial incumbents building controlled blockchain solutions rather than utilizing public networks like the XRP Ledger, which was designed specifically to bypass Swift's historical settlement speeds. It also places Swift in indirect competition with emerging private blockchains like Canton Network, which has gained traction by balancing compliance with privacy. Other major players, such as JPMorgan, have already spent years developing similar infrastructure, rebranding its tokenization unit to Kinexys in 2024.
