Swift to Launch Live Trials of Digital Asset Transactions

Starting next year, Swift will conduct live trials of digital asset and currency transactions across its global messaging network, which currently serves over 11,500 financial institutions worldwide.

Previously, Swift experimented with blockchain transactions in controlled testing environments. However, these upcoming trials will pilot an advanced version of its infrastructure, enabling real-world digital asset and currency transactions across multiple networks for the first time, as announced by the firm on Thursday.

Leveraging the Global Network

The live trials will take advantage of Swift's existing global network and will interlink various digital and traditional currency platforms. This will provide a unified system for banks to transact with both digital and fiat currencies across borders.

According to Swift, the trials aim to illustrate how financial institutions can effortlessly transact across existing and emerging asset and currency types using their current Swift connections. “Global financial institutions will have the ability to use Swift’s global platform to conduct pilot transactions for the settlement of digital assets and currencies,” the announcement noted.

From Experimentation to Reality

This announcement comes after a series of recent experiments by Swift in collaboration with web3 services firm Chainlink. This partnership aims to connect Swift’s network to the Ethereum Sepolia test network. The experiments have shown that Swift can provide a single access point to various public and private blockchain networks, supporting institutions in creating tokenized assets and exploring central bank digital currencies, a topic of interest for 134 countries.

Swift Chief Innovation Officer Tom Zschach emphasized the importance of integrating digital assets and traditional money for global success: “With our vast global reach, we are uniquely positioned to bridge both emerging and established forms of value.”

Addressing Disconnected Platforms

A primary goal of the trials is to tackle the issue of disconnected digital platforms that could impede the widespread adoption of new forms of value. According to Swift, “While the scale is impressive, without interconnectivity between platforms, global adoption is set to remain fragmented.”

“As new forms of value emerge, our intention is to continue offering our community the ability to seamlessly make and track transactions of all kinds of assets — using the same secure and resilient infrastructure that is integral to their operations today," Zschach added.