DBS and Citi Complete Weekend Dollar Payment on Swift Ledger

DBS and Citi completed a U.S. dollar payment between Singapore and Citi’s New York office over the weekend on Sept. 5 using tokenized deposits on Swift’s blockchain-based Digital Ledger, DBS said.

The transfer took minutes and extended the ledger’s live use beyond standard banking hours. Swift says its system lets participating banks move funds for customers overnight and on weekends before completing final settlement through existing systems.

For corporate treasurers, the change is the ability to move liquidity across time zones without losing days to weekend gaps. DBS compared the test with an industry norm of up to two business days for cross-border payments.

The Blockchain Coordinates; Existing Systems Settle

Swift describes the shared ledger as a secure orchestration layer for bank-issued tokenized deposits held on participating banks’ own ledgers. The blockchain component coordinates that movement, while final settlement remains in existing banking systems.

That boundary matters to what the test proved. DBS and Citi demonstrated that the tokenized-deposit process could operate during a weekend; they did not move final settlement onto Swift’s blockchain.

The transaction was 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.

Swift announced on July 9 that the ledger was ready for initial use. Seventeen banks across six continents were preparing live transaction pilots using tokenized deposits, with 24/7 cross-border payments as the first use case.

DBS is the only Asian-headquartered bank in the ledger’s 12-bank core design group. Its announcement did not disclose the Sept. 5 transaction’s value or provide a timetable for broader client availability.