Swift to Begin Digital Payments Trial in 2025

Kicking off in 2025, banks in North America, Europe and Asia that belong to the Swift system will begin live trials of digital asset transactions across its global messaging network. The system serves more than 11,500 financial institutions.

The trials will tap into Swift’s global system and aim to provide a single architecture for banks to transact across borders with cryptocurrencies and national currencies. Swift said that the experiment is designed to showcase how these entities can transact interchangeably through both existing and emerging assets and currencies.

"For digital assets and currencies to succeed on a global scale, it’s critical that they can seamlessly coexist with traditional forms of money,” said Tom Zschach, Chief Innovation Officer at Swift. “With our vast global reach, we are uniquely positioned to bridge both emerging and established forms of value, and we’re now focused on demonstrating this in real-world, mainstream applications.”

The new system will trial Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). More of a monopolistic innovation than a technical one, these are government-controlled digital assets disguised as blockchain-based cryptocurrencies and are being piloted around the world.

In fact, Swift explicitly stated it would be looking to interlink CBDCs and connect private blockchains with public ones.

Swift has been experimenting with digital assets for several years. In 2023, the global interbank message network began to explore cross-chain transfers with major banks. The move was facilitated by Chainlink’s CCIP (Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol) and was tested on Ethereum’s Sepolia testnet.