Swift Opens Blockchain-Based Cross-Border Payments Ledger

Seventeen banks are preparing live pilot transactions on the ledger, which supports 24/7 cross-border payments with tokenized deposits, Swift announced Thursday (July 9).

“With our new ledger capability, we’re extending the trust and stability of established finance into the frontiers of digital money,” Thierry Chilosi, Swift’s chief business officer, said in a news release. “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.”

He added that the “strong support” Swift has gotten from banks demonstrates “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.”

According to the release, the shared ledger gives banks a secure orchestration layer for bank-issued tokenized deposits on their own ledgers, letting them move funds for customers — on nights and weekends included — before final settlement is completed via existing systems.

Swift says it is the first use case for the ledger, announced last year and designed and constructed with input from international financial institutions in the last 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,” Swift said.

In other cross-border payments news, recent PYMNTS Intelligence research shows that many small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are turning to FinTech companies to help make international payments.

Instead of replacing banks, many SMBs seem to be developing a broader payments toolkit as international commerce grows more common, the research found. The data showed satisfaction with payment providers is high across almost every category for internationally active SMBs in the United States.

“FinTech firms stand out by pairing strong customer ratings with rising adoption, suggesting that businesses value providers that can simplify what has traditionally been a complicated process,” PYMNTS wrote last week.

According to the report, 36% of internationally active SMBs said they would use FinTechs or payment providers for cross-border transactions, compared to 30% last year.

In addition, 91% of SMBs using FinTech payment providers rated their experience as good, making them one of the highest-rated categories in the study.