Banks Break New Ground in Tokenized Cross-Border Payments

DBS and Citi have completed the first weekend tokenized cross-border payment between Singapore and the US using Swift's blockchain ledger. The transaction took minutes to finalize, a significant improvement from traditional banking hours that can take up to two business days.

This development demonstrates how banks are exploring blockchain rails for more efficient cross-border transactions while keeping deposits inside banking channels. DBS noted that this was a 'significant improvement' over the industry norm.

DBS and Citi have been part of Swift's pilot program for tokenized cross-border payments with 17 major banks, which began in July. The two companies are also working on developing a blockchain-based tokenization framework with JPMorgan to enable onchain transfers between their deposit token ecosystems.