DBS and Citigroup completed a U.S. dollar payment between Singapore and Citi’s New York office over the weekend of Sept. 5, DBS said. The transaction used tokenized deposits on Swift’s blockchain-based Digital Ledger and took minutes to complete.
The test extended the ledger’s live operation beyond standard banking hours. Swift says participating banks can use the system to move customer funds overnight and on weekends, with final settlement completed later through existing banking systems.
For corporate treasurers, the setup allows liquidity to move across time zones without losing days to weekend gaps. DBS compared the test with an industry norm of up to two business days for cross-border payments.
The blockchain coordinates the movement
Swift describes the shared ledger as a secure orchestration layer for bank-issued tokenized deposits held on the participating banks’ own ledgers. The blockchain component coordinates the movement of funds. Final settlement remains in the existing banking infrastructure.
That distinction defines what the DBS-Citi test demonstrated. The tokenized-deposit process operated over a weekend, but final settlement did not move onto Swift’s blockchain.
The payment was the ledger’s second confirmed live use. HSBC and Standard Chartered completed the first live cross-border transfer in August. The distinguishing feature of the September transaction was its weekend execution on the Singapore-U.S. corridor.
Seventeen banks preparing live pilots
Swift announced on July 9 that the ledger was ready for initial use. Seventeen banks across six continents were preparing live transaction pilots using tokenized deposits, with 24/7 cross-border payments identified as the first use case.
DBS is the only Asian-headquartered bank in the ledger’s 12-bank core design group. Its announcement did not disclose the value of the Sept. 5 transaction or provide a timetable for broader client availability.