Global Banks to Use Swift for Trialling Live Digital Asset Transactions From 2025

Central and commercial banks will be able to use the Swift network to carry out trial transactions of digital currencies and assets, in expansive pilots that seek to demonstrate the cooperative’s ability to facilitate the flow of all kinds of value between more than four billion accounts across 200 countries and territories.

Swift has already successfully demonstrated that it can transfer tokenised value across public and private blockchains, interlink central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) globally, and integrate multiple digital asset and cash networks. The new trials will explore how Swift can provide its community of financial institutions with a single window of access to multiple digital asset classes and currencies – paving the way for their seamless integration into the wider financial system. Initial use cases will focus on payments, FX, securities, and trade, to enable multi-ledger Delivery-versus-Payment (DvP) and Payment-versus-Payment (PvP) transactions.

Latest industry figures show that 134 countries are currently exploring CBDCs¹, and the tokenised asset market is projected to reach $16 trillion by 2030². But the rapid growth of unconnected platforms and technologies has led to an increasingly fragmented landscape, creating a complex web of 'digital islands’ that presents a significant barrier to global adoption. Swift’s trials will leverage its unique position at the heart of the financial system to interlink these disparate networks with each other as well as with existing fiat currencies, enabling its global community to seamlessly transact using digital assets and currencies alongside traditional forms of value, using their existing infrastructure.

Earlier this month, Swift was named as a participant in Project Agorá, a Bank for International Settlements-led project exploring the integration of tokenised commercial bank deposits and tokenised wholesale CBDCs on a unified platform.

Tom Zschach, Chief Innovation Officer, Swift, said: "For digital assets and currencies to succeed on a global scale, it’s critical that they can seamlessly coexist with traditional forms of money. With Swift’s vast global reach, we are uniquely positioned to bridge both emerging and established forms of value, and we’re now focused on demonstrating this in real-world, mainstream applications. As new forms of value emerge, our intention is to continue offering our community the ability to seamlessly make and track transactions of all kinds of assets - using the same secure and resilient infrastructure that is integral to their operations today."

About Swift

Swift is a global member owned cooperative and the world’s leading provider of secure financial messaging services. We provide our community with a platform for messaging and standards for communicating, and we offer products and services to facilitate access and integration, identification, analysis and regulatory compliance.

Our messaging platform, products and services connect more than 11,500 banking and securities organisations, market infrastructures and corporate customers in more than 200 countries and territories. While Swift does not hold funds or manage accounts on behalf of customers, we enable our global community of users to communicate securely, exchanging standardised financial messages in a reliable way, thereby supporting global and local financial flows, as well as trade and commerce all around the world.

As their trusted provider, we relentlessly pursue operational excellence; we support our community in addressing cyber threats; and we continually seek ways to lower costs, reduce risks and eliminate operational inefficiencies. Our products and services support our community’s access and integration, business intelligence, reference data and financial crime compliance needs. Swift also brings the financial community together – at global, regional and local levels – to shape market practice, define standards and debate issues of mutual interest or concern.

Headquartered in Belgium, Swift’s international governance and oversight reinforces the globally inclusive character of its cooperative structure. Swift’s global office network ensures an active presence in all the major financial centres.

¹ Atlantic Council CBDC tracker: Central Bank Digital Currency Tracker - Atlantic Council

² Boston Consulting Group: web-assets.bcg.com/1e/a2/5b5f2b7e42dfad2cb3113a291222/on-chain-asset-tokenization.pdf

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