Germany, 1 October 2025 - Known for providing a secure network that financial institutions use to communicate with each other, Swift’s additional infrastructure aimed at improving international money transactions is poised to set the pace for other players in the sector.
This landmark initiative, unveiled at Sibos 2025 in Frankfurt, aims to extend Swift’s (The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications) trusted platform into a fully digital environment.
Additionally, it will unlock potential benefits such as always-on transactions at a global scale, accelerating the industry’s transition to digital finance across more than 200 countries and territories.
While making the announcement, Swift CEO Javier Perez-Tasso said:
“I'm very pleased to announce that we will add a blockchain-based ledger to our technology infrastructure to allow for trusted movement of tokenized value across the digital ecosystems.”
Acknowledging that the move may surprise some observers, Perez-Tasso added:
“You may think, ‘Aren’t those opposites? Swift and blockchain. TradFi and DeFi. Can they really work together?’ In the regulated financial system of the future, we believe they absolutely can. Banks are ready for this evolution—and they’re asking us to take a bigger role,” said Pérez-Tasso.
The design and development of the new infrastructure is already underway, in collaboration with over 30 global financial institutions. The first use case will focus on enabling real-time, 24/7 cross-border payments.
The blockchain-based shared ledger,a secure, real-time log of transactions between financial institutions, will begin as a conceptual prototype developed with Consensys. It will be capable of recording, sequencing, and validating transactions, and will enforce rules through smart contracts.
Built for interoperability, the ledger will be compatible with both existing systems and emerging networks. It will also uphold the trust, resilience, and compliance that Swift is known for, qualities essential to the secure operation of global finance.
“Combining a shared ledger with Swift’s existing messaging, APIs, and ISO 20022 creates an even more powerful construct – one that can embed risk, controls, and compliance requirements from the outset into transaction flows while enabling real-time 24/7 interbank cross-border payments with the same trust, security, resilience, scalability, and operational excellence Swift is known for. All in line with the approach we’ve always taken of responsible innovation.”, said Pérez-Tasso.
The ledger will complement recent upgrades to Swift’s existing rails, along with new interoperability solutions designed to coordinate transactions across both traditional and emerging systems. Together, these initiatives aim to make payments faster, more predictable, and globally scalable.
Pérez-Tasso emphasized that financial infrastructures must maintain an unwavering focus on the fundamentals: operational excellence, regulatory compliance, and governance.
Currently, financial institutions from 16 countries are actively shaping the ledger’s design, with over 30 leading banks collaborating with SWIFT to define its functionality, governance, and future development phases.
“At the same time, they must prepare for the future. At Swift, our strategy is to innovate along two parallel tracks,” he explained. This dual approach ensures that banks and their customers receive best-in-class payment experiences, no matter how value is transferred.
“When it comes to infrastructure, strength comes from layered innovation. It’s not a matter of choosing one path or the other; it’s both. And we firmly believe that the whole will be greater than the sum of its parts,” he concluded