Swift announced that its blockchain-based ledger is ready for initial use, enabling early adopter financial institutions to support 24/7 cross-border payments with tokenised deposits — and marking a decisive step in scaling the benefits of digital value across the regulated global financial system.

Seventeen banks from six continents are preparing to pilot live transactions, reflecting strong global demand for the new addition to Swift’s technology stack and its ability to unlock faster, flexible money movement across the world. The shared ledger provides participating banks with a secure orchestration layer for bank-issued tokenised deposits on their own ledgers, enabling them to move funds for customers -- including overnight and on weekends -- before completing final settlement through existing systems. Banks benefit from improved client experience and global liquidity efficiency without compromising compliance, credit, risk and control standards embedded in existing payment processing.

It’s the first use case for the ledger, which Swift announced last year and designed and built with feedback from international financial institutions in just nine months. The development sets the stage for next generation innovation and interoperability on infrastructure already trusted to move the equivalent of world GDP every two to three days between more than 200 markets and with a record for sustaining the highest levels of operational excellence.

Thierry Chilosi, Chief Business Officer at Swift, said: “With our new ledger capability, we’re extending the trust and stability of established finance into the frontiers of digital money. 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. The strong support from banks shows the practical value of this approach — one that will help scale benefits globally while creating a foundation for future innovation in areas like programmable money and agentic commerce.”

The ledger, which will expand in functionality and availability after the initial controlled go-live phase, builds upon improvements already made by Swift and its community to existing rails. A full 75 percent of payments on the network reach beneficiary banks within 10 minutes, and often in seconds, and the cooperative is going even further to advance the industry to meet the G20 targets for international transactions. With its community, Swift is implementing a retail payments framework that ensures upfront transparency on fees, full value delivery and a faster, more consistent experience for consumers. Together with the ledger, the upgrades provide a strong foundation for the future that will enable value to move in any regulated form, anywhere, with the highest levels of security and resilience.