Swift gears up for 2025 live trials of digital asset transactions
Swift is set to commence live trials of digital assets and currency transactions through its network from next year.
Swift to trial transactions with digital assets
The proposed pilot transactions will enable financial institutions operating in North America, Europe and Asia to use Swift to transact interchangeably across both existing and emerging asset and currency types.
The trials will interlink various digital and traditional currency platforms with the network, providing what Swift describes as “a single system for banks to transact across borders with digital and fiat currencies and further aiding this new market to grow”.
The Belgium-based company says the development will seek to address “digital islands” and mitigate the “key challenge” of disconnected digital platforms which could, according to a statement, “hinder more widespread adoption and ease of use for new forms of value”.
“This marks a giant leap forward from our prior experimentation, with a deliberate focus on providing interlinking and orchestration capabilities that could support real-world solutions,” Swift says.
In preparation for the trials’ arrival next year, Swift has begun exploring how to combine traditional financial systems with emerging bank-led networks, such as the US Regulated Settlement Network, using its interlinking capabilities.
This is in addition to its participation in Project Agorá, which is currently investigating the integration of tokenised commercial bank deposits and tokenised wholesale CBDCs on a unified platform under the initiative of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).
Tom Zschach, Swift’s chief innovation officer, explains that for digital assets to succeed on the required global scale, “it’s critical that they can seamlessly coexist with traditional forms of money”.
“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 comments.
