DBS and Citi Clear Cross-Border Payment in Minutes on SWIFT's Ledger
DBS and Citi have settled a cross-border payment between Singapore and New York using tokenized deposits on SWIFT's shared ledger, clearing the transfer in minutes over a weekend. The conventional payment would typically take up to two business days.
The banks used tokenized deposits, commercial-bank money issued on a blockchain, with SWIFT's ledger acting as an orchestration layer that matched and netted the obligations between the two institutions before final settlement ran through existing payment rails.
DBS is building out its tokenized rails, having launched DBS Token Services in 2024. It runs DBS Treasury Tokens, a permissioned blockchain for corporate treasury and liquidity management, and has teamed with Ripple and Franklin Templeton to launch tokenized repo markets on the XRP Ledger.
The milestone payment follows the first live tokenized deposit transfer on the network, which HSBC and Standard Chartered ran on August 19. Seventeen banks from six continents are piloting live transactions on the ledger, which Swift announced in September 2025.