Overview
- The banks completed the first live inter-bank tokenized deposit transfer on Swift’s shared blockchain ledger on Wednesday, August 19, 2026, moving the project from MVP testing to an executed cross-bank transfer.
- Swift declared a minimum viable product live in July 2026 and built the shared ledger to let participating banks link their own tokenized deposit platforms so they can send value peer-to-peer 24/7.
- Tokenized deposits are digital representations of actual bank balances that remain regulated bank liabilities, not public stablecoins, and the Swift ledger only permits tokenized deposits issued by regulated banks.
- Despite continuous on-ledger movement, the system still relies on traditional settlement rails for legal and final settlement, so transfers can be instant on the ledger but settle through existing bank processes.
- The next tests will show if other banks in Swift’s 17-member consortium replicate live peer-to-peer transfers and if the network scales through Swift’s wider connectivity to over 11,000 institutions.