Highlights:
- Swift will launch global digital asset transaction trials in 2025, involving banks across North America, Europe, and Asia.
- The trials aim to enable seamless transactions between digital assets and traditional currencies using the existing Swift infrastructure.
- The move aims to bridge fragmented digital platforms, promoting smoother global transactions for payments, foreign exchange, and securities.
Banks across North America, Europe, and Asia are set to participate in live trials for digital asset and currency transactions using Swift’s global network in 2025. The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift) announced the trials as a major step towards integrating digital currencies and assets with traditional financial systems.
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These trials aim to explore how financial institutions can seamlessly conduct digital asset transactions while continuing to use the Swift infrastructure that has long supported global fiat currency transactions.
The trials will focus on various financial activities, including payments, foreign exchange, and securities. By allowing banks to use their existing Swift connections, they will show how traditional and digital currencies can coexist within one interoperable system. The goal is to enable seamless cross-border transactions that integrate both emerging and established forms of value.
Exciting news! Starting next year, financial institutions from around the world will start trialling live digital asset and currency transactions on the Swift network.
This marks an important milestone in our journey to enable banks to transact interchangeably across both… pic.twitter.com/70BxOMoBpT
— Swift (@swiftcommunity) October 3, 2024
Pilot Projects Across Global Regions
These pilot trials are particularly significant, as they will take place across multiple regions, including North America, Europe, and Asia. Commercial and central banks will participate in leveraging Swift’s global network.
In addition, this will connect more than 11,500 financial institutions across 200 countries and territories. Through these trials, Swift aims to offer a unified platform that allows for the integration of digital asset classes and currencies.
Tom Zschach, Swift’s Chief Innovation Officer, emphasized the importance of interoperability for digital assets to succeed globally. “For digital assets and currencies to succeed globally, it’s critical that they can seamlessly coexist with traditional forms of money,” Zschach said. He added that Swift’s global reach positions it uniquely to bridge both emerging and established value forms and demonstrate their real-world application.
Addressing Fragmentation in the Digital Asset Landscape
The digital asset market has seen rapid growth in recent years, with 134 countries currently exploring central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). At the same time, the tokenized assets market is projected to reach $30 trillion by 2034, according to industry forecasts.
However, the rise of disconnected digital platforms—often referred to as ‘digital islands’—has presented a barrier to widespread global adoption. Swift aims to address this challenge by using its existing infrastructure to interlink these disconnected platforms.
The pilot trials will explore key use cases such as Delivery-versus-Payment (DvP) and Payment-versus-Payment (PvP) transactions. Consequently, this will help financial institutions settle transactions between multiple digital and traditional currencies. These trials will also demonstrate how financial institutions can transact across different platforms without requiring entirely new systems.
A Unified Approach to Digital and Traditional Assets
Swift has already proven its ability to transfer tokenized value between public and private blockchains in controlled environments. The move to live trials in 2025 marks a new chapter, as these pilots will show how Swift can interlink various digital platforms with existing fiat currency systems. The trials aim to bring digital asset transactions into mainstream financial systems, providing a secure and scalable future for these emerging asset classes.
Additionally, Swift is involved in Project Agorá, an initiative led by the Bank for International Settlements. This project seeks to integrate tokenized commercial bank deposits and wholesale CBDCs on a unified platform. Swift’s involvement highlights its role in shaping the future of digital transactions while ensuring these new forms of value work alongside traditional currencies.
The BIS, central banks and private sector are embarking on Project Agorá to explore #Tokenisation of cross-border payments @banquedefrance @Bank_of_Japan_e @bok_hub @Banxico @SNB_BNS @bankofengland @NewYorkFed https://t.co/mDFKBqNCqc pic.twitter.com/GRsEButU2I
— Bank for International Settlements (@BIS_org) April 3, 2024
Swift’s 2025 digital asset trials aim to bring the global banking industry closer to real-world applications of digital currencies. By offering financial institutions a single point of access to multiple asset classes, Swift continues to bridge the gap between digital and traditional financial systems.
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