Swift has announced that beginning 2025, banks across North America, Europe, and Asia will initiate live trials for digital asset and currency transactions via the Swift network. 
These trials will illustrate how institutions can transact across both existing and emerging asset classes and currency types smoothly, utilising their current Swift connections.
Tom Zschach, chief innovation officer at Swift, said: “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.”
Recent experiments have linked public and private blockchains, interconnected central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) worldwide, and integrated various digital asset networks. The emphasis is now on practical implementation.
Next year, Swift will partner with its network to pilot an advanced infrastructure that will facilitate digital asset transactions across multiple networks for the first time, enabling financial institutions to access a wide range of digital asset classes and currencies.
“For digital assets and currencies to succeed on a global scale, it’s critical that they can seamlessly coexist with traditional forms of money,” said Zschach. “With our vast global reach, we are uniquely positioned to bridge both emerging and established forms of value, and we’re now focused on demonstrating this in real-world, mainstream applications.”
The trials are designed to tackle a critical challenge in the evolving digital asset market; the proliferation of isolated digital platforms, or ‘digital islands,’ which could obstruct broader adoption and ease of use for new asset forms.
In the lead-up to next year’s trials, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) and Banque de France are using Swift’s capabilities in ongoing experiments for foreign exchange use cases, as part of the European Central Bank’s (ECB) initiative to explore new technologies for wholesale payments.
Swift is also investigating the integration of emerging bank-led networks, such as the US regulated settlement network, with traditional financial systems.
Recently, Swift was named a participant in Project Agora, led by the Bank for International Settlements, which seeks to integrate tokenised commercial bank deposits and wholesale CBDCs on a unified platform.
“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,” said Zschach.