Swift to Start Live Trials of Digital Asset Transactions

Recent experiments have proven our capacity to connect public and private blockchains, interlink central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) on a global scale, and integrate multiple digital asset and currency networks.

Now we’re moving beyond experimentation.

Next year we’ll be collaborating with our community to pilot an advanced version of our infrastructure that is capable of orchestrating digital asset and currency transactions across networks for the first time. This move will mark an important milestone as we progress towards achieving our ultimate vision of giving financial institutions a single point of access to multiple digital asset classes and currencies.

“For digital assets and currencies to succeed on a global scale, it’s critical that they can seamlessly coexist with traditional forms of money,” said Tom Zschach, Chief Innovation Officer at Swift. “With our 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.”

Pioneering global interlinking of digital networks

These trials aim to address a key challenge in the continuously evolving digital asset market: the rise of disconnected digital platforms, or ‘digital islands’,

that could hinder more widespread adoption and ease of use for new forms of value.Currently, 134 countries are exploring CBDCs, and the size of the tokenised assets market is forecast by Standard Chartered and Synpulse to rise as high as $30 trillion by 2034. 91% of institutional investors also say they’re interested in investing in tokenised assets, according to a survey from Celent and BNY Mellon.

While the scale is impressive, without interconnectivity between platforms, global adoption is set to remain fragmented. The live trials will leverage our existing global network to interlink various digital and traditional currency platforms, providing a single system for banks to transact across borders with digital and fiat currencies and further aiding this new market to grow.

Proving the real-world impact for payments, FX, and securities

In the lead-up to next year’s trials, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and Banque de France are leveraging Swift’s capabilities in ongoing experiments for foreign exchange use cases, as part of the European Central Bank’s initiative to explore new technologies for wholesale payments.

We’re also investigating how our interlinking capabilities could integrate emerging bank-led networks, such as the US Regulated Settlement Network, with traditional financial systems. Swift has also recently been named as a participant in Project Agora, a Bank for International Settlements-led project exploring the integration of tokenised commercial bank deposits and tokenised wholesale CBDCs on a unified platform.

Enabling a secure and scalable future for digital assets

We’re committed to ensuring our global network of over 11,500 financial institutions will be able to support digital assets and currencies through their existing Swift connectivity securely and efficiently. We believe these trials and collaborative innovations are a critical step in achieving global interoperability for these new forms of value, and our global network is an essential bridge between traditional and digital asset platforms.

Swift is uniquely positioned to support the global adoption of diverse asset classes across multiple use cases. As the financial industry continues its migration to ISO 20022 and the promise of richer, more structured data, we’ll continue to provide end-to-end transparency, a centralised view of transaction data, and the ability to access it all in real-time – even as value takes on new forms across different networks.

“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,” Tom says.

Source: Swift