Swift said on Sept. 28, the opening day of the Sibos annual financial industry conference in Miami, that most of the first 17 banks using its blockchain-based ledger have already processed live 24/7 cross-border payments through the system, moving tokenized funds between Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America.
On the same day, Swift also said it is working with domestic instant payment systems including Spain’s Bizum, Australia’s PayID, and Brazil’s Pix to study whether cross-border remittances can also be completed using only a phone number or email address.
Swift frames the platform as a bridge for regulated value
In his opening speech, Swift Chief Executive Officer Javier Pérez-Tasso said: 「The question is no longer traditional finance or decentralized finance. It is not a binary choice. The Swift platform lets you move any form of regulated value at global scale, whether fiat currency or tokenized assets.」
Ledger transactions have been completed in five currencies
According to Swift, the banks have completed transactions in five currencies: the euro, pound sterling, Hong Kong dollar, Singapore dollar, and U.S. dollar. The transactions have covered financial institution settlement, corporate treasury management, and interbank liquidity transfers.
Swift said on July 9 that the ledger was ready to begin use, with 17 banks from six continents preparing for the pilot. Chain News had previously reported that the ledger was built on Ethereum Layer 2 network Linea, and that the first group of banks included Citi, DBS, HSBC, and Standard Chartered. DBS and Citi also completed the first weekend cross-border U.S. dollar transfer through the system in September.
Swift said the first phase was deliberately focused on 24/7 instant payments using tokenized deposits, the digital form of commercial bank money already familiar to participating banks. The ledger was designed for interoperability and may later expand, based on market demand, into areas such as programmable money and AI agent commerce, allowing traditional and digital assets to coexist globally.
Cross-border transfers by alias are aimed at retail users
A separate collaboration is focused on consumers. Swift said millions of people are already used to making fast domestic transfers through Bizum, PayID, and Pix without needing to know the recipient’s account number. The new effort brings together banks, payment providers, and technology firms across four continents to make phone numbers, email addresses, and virtual payment aliases already registered in domestic systems available for secure use in cross-border transactions on Swift.
Participants include Australian payments body AP+, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA), Bizum, Brazil’s Bradesco, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, DBS, India’s IDFC FIRST Bank, Brazil’s Ouribank, and TerraPay. Bizum described the initiative as a Swift proof of concept, while Ouribank said it is helping connect Brazil’s Pix ecosystem to Swift’s global network.
Swift says the bottleneck remains in the last mile
The alias-based transfer project is built on Swift’s consumer payments framework launched in June. Swift said more than 100 banks are already participating, with the framework designed to ensure remittances arrive in full and that fees and exchange rates are confirmed in advance.
Swift gave several examples: a transfer from Turkey to Spain takes 15 seconds, Australia to India takes 37 seconds, and Brazil to the United States takes about one minute.
Swift said 75% of cross-border payments currently reach the beneficiary bank within 10 minutes, but about 80% of the total transaction time is spent in the “last mile” after funds leave the Swift network and move through the recipient country’s domestic banking system before reaching the end customer. Swift said it currently connects 12,500 institutions across 200 markets and 150 currencies.