DBS and Citi Speed Up Cross-Border Payments with Swift Blockchain Ledger

DBS and Citi have successfully completed a US dollar payment using tokenized deposits on Swift's blockchain-based Digital Ledger. The Singapore-US transfer took just minutes, marking an extension of the ledger's live use beyond standard banking hours.

The payment, which occurred over the weekend on September 5, was facilitated by DBS and Citi using the digital ledger's secure orchestration layer for bank-issued tokenized deposits held on participating banks' own ledgers. The blockchain component coordinated this movement while final settlement remained in existing banking systems.

Swift describes its system as a shared ledger that allows participating banks to move funds overnight and on weekends before completing final settlement through existing systems. This means corporate treasurers can now move liquidity across time zones without losing days due to weekend gaps, reducing the typical cross-border payment timeframe of up to two business days.

This transaction marks the second confirmed live use of the ledger, following HSBC and Standard Chartered's first live cross-border transfer in August. The September payment's distinguishing feature was its weekend execution on the Singapore-US corridor, with Swift announcing that 17 banks across six continents were preparing live transaction pilots using tokenized deposits as part of its initial use case.