SWIFT has completed the design phase of its blockchain-based shared ledger and is building an MVP for live tokenised deposit payments across more than 200 countries. The system, built on Hyperledger Besu, aims to make cross-border settlement a 24/7 operation.
SWIFT has moved its blockchain-based shared ledger from the design phase into an active MVP build, bringing more than 40 financial institutions into a live test of tokenised cross-border deposit payments.
The system is designed to run alongside SWIFT's existing messaging infrastructure — not replace it — and targets a problem that has persisted for decades: cross-border payments still rely on correspondent banking chains that operate on business-hours schedules, settle in batches, and charge fees that reflect their inefficiency rather than their cost. SWIFT's ledger aims to make those transfers continuous, settling tokenised commercial bank deposits on a shared interbank layer that runs around the clock.
The technical architecture is EVM-compatible, built on Hyperledger Besu — an open-source Ethereum client maintained by the Linux Foundation's Hyperledger project. That choice is deliberate. EVM compatibility means the ledger can interact with the broader digital asset ecosystem, including public Ethereum and its Layer 2 networks, without requiring banks to adopt unfamiliar tooling. It also means SWIFT is building on a codebase that thousands of developers already know, reducing the integration burden for participating institutions.
The MVP will process real transactions this year, though SWIFT has not specified an exact launch date. The initial scope is narrow: tokenised deposit payments between participating banks, using commercial bank money rather than central bank digital currencies or stablecoins. The distinction matters. By tokenising deposits — claims on real money held at regulated banks — SWIFT avoids the regulatory ambiguity that has slowed CBDC pilots and stablecoin adoption in wholesale markets. A tokenised deposit is, legally, still a deposit. The blockchain just makes it programmable and transferable at machine speed.
The 40-plus banks involved in the design phase shaped the ledger's functionality through a collaborative process that began after SWIFT announced the project in September 2025. The cohort explored how a shared interbank coordination layer could improve settlement predictability and reduce the friction that makes cross-border payments slower and more expensive than domestic ones. The MVP provides an environment for these institutions to test 24/7 payment flows and gain operational experience with the technology before committing to broader deployment.
SWIFT's reach gives the project a scale advantage that no crypto-native competitor can match. The network connects more than 11,000 institutions across 200 countries and territories — an installed base that took half a century to build. Adding a blockchain layer to that infrastructure is fundamentally different from asking banks to migrate to a new network. The banks don't have to change their SWIFT connectivity; they gain an additional settlement option that coexists with the existing system.
The competitive landscape is worth noting. Stablecoin issuers like Circle and Tether have positioned their tokens as alternatives to correspondent banking, and several banks — including HSBC and Société Générale — have launched their own tokenised deposit products on public or permissioned chains. SWIFT's approach doesn't compete with these experiments directly; it offers a coordination layer that could eventually interoperate with them. The organisation has been explicit about its intention to explore integration with other on-chain settlement assets and use cases beyond the initial MVP.
The timing aligns with a broader institutional shift. Tokenised real-world assets have grown to a distributed asset value of $29.2 billion as of April 2026, and BlackRock's BUIDL fund — a tokenised US Treasury product — is now trading on decentralised exchanges. Banks that once dismissed blockchain as a solution looking for a problem are now competing to tokenise deposits, bonds, and fund shares. SWIFT's shared ledger gives them a venue to do it within the regulatory and operational framework they already trust.
Whether the MVP delivers on its promises is a separate question. Blockchain-based settlement systems have a long history of impressive pilots that never reach production scale — R3's Corda, IBM's Hyperledger Fabric partnerships, and various central bank experiments have all demonstrated technical feasibility without achieving commercial traction. SWIFT's advantage is distribution, not technology. If the shared ledger works at MVP scale, the path to production runs through an existing network that already handles 46 million messages a day. That's not a guarantee of success, but it's a better starting position than any competitor has managed.
