DBS and Citi Settle Cross-Border Payment in Minutes with Blockchain

DBS and Citi successfully settled a US dollar cross-border payment between Singapore and New York using tokenized deposits on SWIFT's shared ledger.

The transaction, which took place on September 5, was cleared in minutes over a weekend when a conventional payment can take up to two business days.

Tokenized deposits are 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.