Swift said its blockchain-based ledger is ready for initial use, letting banks move money across borders around the clock in the network's deepest step yet into tokenized deposits.
Swift Opens Blockchain Ledger to Bank Pilots for 24/7 Payments
9 July 2026 - 14:00 CEST
By Stu Clelland
Swift is a member-owned cooperative that sits at the centre of cross-border finance, carrying the standardized messages that instruct banks to move money. Its network connects more than 11,500 institutions in more than 200 countries, on infrastructure Swift says shifts the equivalent of world GDP every two to three days, yet it does not hold or move the funds itself. That makes the new ledger a departure.
Seventeen banks line up for live pilots
The 17 banks preparing to pilot live transactions span six continents and include HSBC, Citi, BNY, Wells Fargo, BNP Paribas, UBS, Standard Chartered and Lloyds. The system lets them move bank-issued tokenized deposits, the digital form of commercial bank balances, outside standard banking hours before settling through existing rails. Swift first set out the plan at its Sibos conference in September 2025 and says it designed and built the first version in nine months.
Built on Ethereum's architecture
The ledger runs as an orchestration layer on top of banks' own systems rather than replacing them. It records and validates payment commitments, while each bank keeps control of its keys, funding and final settlement. Built on open-source foundations with Consensys, it uses an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible design based on Hyperledger Besu, bringing the architecture of public crypto networks into a regulated, permissioned setting.
A crowded race for always-on rails
The move places Swift in a contest to build always-on payment rails. The announcement follows a stablecoin consortium of more than 100 firms last week, the Open USD project, with backers including Visa and Stripe, and a tokenized-deposit network run by The Clearing House in the US. Swift framed the ledger as a foundation for future "programmable money and agentic commerce."
A minimum viable product is due to carry real transactions later this year, after an initial controlled go-live phase. For now, the banks are preparing to pilot, and interbank settlement will still run initially through systems such as real-time gross settlement and correspondent banking.
