What Swift’s blockchain ledger means for stablecoin innovation

At Sibos in Frankfurt, Swift announced it will add a blockchain-based shared ledger to its infrastructure stack.

For a co-operative best known for messaging standards, this is a profound shift: moving from coordinating instructions to coordinating on-chain state, with the aim of enabling 24/7, instant, and programmable cross-border transactions at global scale.

Swift is developing the concept with ConsenSys and input from over 30 major banks, positioning itself as a neutral, compliance-first orchestration layer for tokenised value. Crucially, Swift is not launching a Swift-branded stablecoin; it is building a ledger designed to interoperate with regulated forms of digital money — tokenised deposits, CBDCs, and compliant stablecoins.

What exactly is Swift proposing?

Swift’s shared ledger is described as a secure, real-time log that can “record, sequence and validate transactions” and enforce rules via smart contracts.

Phase one is a conceptual prototype built with blockchain software firm ConsenSys, while banks from 16 countries are also contributing to the design.

Swift emphasises there will be interoperability with existing and emerging networks and reiterates that token issuance choices remain with commercial and central banks — Swift will supply the connective tissue. While some industry reporting suggests the prototype will leverage Ethereum infrastructure (for example ConsenSys’ Linea L2), Swift’s official materials remain token- and network-agnostic.

The motivation is straightforward: a stablecoin market approaching $300 billion has proven there is demand for 24/7 settlement and programmable transfers, and banks themselves are now piloting tokenised deposits and exploring bank-issued tokens. Swift’s move brings those capabilities into a standards-driven, compliance-heavy environment its members already trust.

Stablecoins, tokenised deposits, CBDCs: The new money stack

It helps to distinguish the forms of digital money now in play:

1. Stablecoins

Stablecoins, - private tokens pegged to fiat currencies — have dominated crypto-native flows and are now inching into commerce and B2B use cases. Under the EU’s MiCA regime, which became fully applicable from 30 December 2024 (with rules for asset-referenced tokens (ARTs) and e-money tokens (EMTs) in force since 30 June 2024), issuers face stringent requirements around asset backing, disclosures, and governance.

The US GENIUS Act (signed July 2025) creates a federal framework for payment stablecoins, catalysing mainstream adoption by clarifying who can issue and how reserves must be held. In the UK, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is consulting on issuer and custody rules (CP25/14 and the forthcoming CP25/25), while the Bank of England is developing a regime for systemic stablecoin-based payment systems.

2.  Tokenised deposits

Tokenised deposits are digital versions of money held in a bank — like regular bank deposits, but represented as programmable tokens on a blockchain. In 2025, big banks made major moves: J.P. Morgan tested USD deposit tokens through its Kinexys platform, and Citi connected its token services to round-the-clock USD clearing between banks. These innovations aim to offer the smooth user experience of stablecoins, but with the safety and compliance of traditional banking — and direct links to corporate treasury systems.

3. CBDCs (retail or wholesale)

CBDCs remain evolutionary across jurisdictions; the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) continues to argue that stablecoins struggle with “singleness of money” and elasticity, and that tokenised central bank money and unified ledgers offer a better foundation for systemic settlement.

What changes for stablecoins?

Clarity cuts both ways. On one hand, regulatory progress — MiCA in the EU, GENIUS in the US, and UK consultations — improves bankability for fully-backed, well-supervised stablecoins. On the other hand, a shared digital ledger hosted by Swift — with built-in rules — could make tokenised bank deposits and CBDCs the standard way institutions move money between each other. This could reduce the speed and cost advantages that originally made stablecoins attractive to many companies. In short: good actors win, speculative or loosely governed models get squeezed.

There’s also a distribution effect. If Swift can create a secure and reliable way for banks to interact with stablecoins — for example, converting between regular money, stablecoins, and tokenised deposits — and apply strong compliance and data standards, then stablecoins could focus on what they do best: providing fast liquidity across open networks, enabling programmable payments, and settling trades across different platforms.

Meanwhile, banks would continue to manage large, regulated payment channels. This fits with the BIS’s view: in areas where consistency and trust are critical — like core payments and large-scale settlements — traditional bank and central bank money will likely remain dominant. But stablecoins could still play an important role in driving innovation at the edges of the financial system.

Finally, politics matters. UK policymakers are signalling that widely used stablecoins should be regulated like money — with potential reserve access and resolution regimes — while also encouraging tokenised deposits. Expect hybrid routing, i.e, different types of digital money will compete, and whichever option is cheapest and meets the rules will be used for each type of payment.

What changes for fintechs and banks?

For banks, Swift’s ledger promises programmable treasury and liquidity across borders. It also allows rich data (using the ISO 20022 standard) to be built directly into blockchain-based processes.

That could lift sanctions screening, fraud analytics, and reg-by-design controls from “after the fact” checks to real-time rule enforcement. The move also aligns with banks’ own tokenised money initiatives by the likes of JP Morgan and Citi, creating a consistent path from on-us tokens to interbank and cross-border settlement.

For fintechs, this is a platform moment. The largest distribution network in finance is signalling it will support always-on, programmable cash and assets. That opens lanes for:

• Smart receivables and invoice-linked payments that self-reconcile across borders.
• Foreign exchange and payment orchestration engines that choose among stablecoins, tokenised deposits, and fiat based on policy, price, and risk.
• Compliance automation: embedding attestations (KYC/KYB, travel rule, sanctions, proof-of-reserves) into flows, not separate from them.
• Tokenised capital markets servicing (subscriptions/redemptions, corporate actions) integrated with banking rails — an area Swift has been piloting with large institutions.

For non-bank crypto rails, the gap that stablecoins exploited — fast, global settlement — will narrow. Their differentiation must move up-stack: open programmability, composability, and developer ecosystems that banks may never fully replicate.

The Gillmore Centre lens

Our research and policy work at the Gillmore Centre points to an inevitable hybrid future:

• In ‘Bridging the Divide: The Hybrid Future of Stablecoins and Traditional Finance’ (Rhomaios Ram, Aug 2025), we argue that public-chain stablecoins and bank rails will co-evolve, with interoperability layers making the system workable at scale. Swift’s ledger is precisely such a layer, enabling banks to access programmable money while preserving compliance and resilience.
• In our response to the Bank of England (2024), we flagged the challenge of moving from non-systemic to systemic regimes, the need to preserve the singleness of money, and the risk that some business models may struggle to transition if required to give up yield on reserves and operate on a pure payments model. Swift’s rules-first design is a way to operationalise those policy goals without shutting the door on innovation.
• At our 2025 Gillmore conference, new evidence suggested stablecoin lending rates are weakly sensitive to Fed policy, raising hard questions about monetary transmission if stablecoins intermediate a larger share of cross-border value. Orchestration layers like Swift’s may act as policy levers by steering institutional flows toward instruments where regulatory and monetary control is clearer.
• Our Crypto Dashboard project (launched 2023) explores how transparency metrics and real-time analytics can be fused with AI-driven monitoring — exactly the sort of data fabric that could populate on-chain rulebooks for institutional settlement.

Risks and open questions

1. Governance and legal enforceability. Who writes and updates the smart-contract rulebooks that will live on Swift’s ledger? How are conflicts of law resolved across jurisdictions? The governance model must balance global standards with local compliance.
2. Resilience and neutrality. Concentrating tokenised settlement orchestration in a single utility concentrates operational and political risk. Swift’s strength is resiliency; the same bar must apply to ledger components and their change-management processes.
3. Privacy and data minimisation. ISO 20022 adds richness; blockchains add transparency. Stitching the two together requires data minimisation and selective disclosure — otherwise compliance gains create new privacy liabilities.
4. Timeline realism. Many headlines blur prototypes with production. Even with Swift’s gravitational pull, moving critical payment flows to new rails is a multi-year journey with staged pilots. Watching what goes live, with what service-level guarantees, will be more meaningful than any press line.

What to watch in the next 12-24 months

1. Bank pilots converting into live corridors with 24/7 guarantees (initially close-currency, low-risk corridors).
2. Bridging patterns: where do banks choose tokenised deposits vs stablecoins vs conventional rails for specific use cases?
3. Regulatory inflection points: the UK’s next consultation steps, EU MiCA supervisory practice (especially for non-EU issuers), and US GENIUS implementation timelines.
4. Market structure signals: does stablecoin market share by chain or issuer shift as banks deploy deposit tokens and as Swift’s ledger pilots deepen? Expect consolidation toward fully transparent, high-quality-reserve models.
5. Tokenised funds & securities: continued work on fund subscriptions, redemptions and corporate actions that pair on-chain assets with off-chain cash via Swift.

Practical guidance for fintechs and corporates

• Design for multi-rail from day one. Your payment/treasury stack should abstract away the instrument — route between stablecoins, tokenised deposits, and fiat based on policy (jurisdiction, counterparty, transaction type), economics (fees, FX), and service-level requirements.
• Invest in ISO 20022-native data models and attestation pipelines. Swift’s direction implies compliance-by-construction: sanctions, travel rule, proof-of-funds, and other checks expressed as machine-readable conditions. Build internal data quality programs to feed those rule engines.
• Liquidity operations: a 24/7 world breaks traditional intraday assumptions. Simulate cash cycles across rails; re-think cut-offs, buffer liquidity, and automated sweeping between bank accounts, tokenised deposits, and stablecoin wallets.
• Vendor diligence: prioritise interoperability (Swift APIs/ledger integration), auditability, smart-contract upgradability, and contingency procedures. Ensure clear exit ramps in case a rail becomes unviable in a jurisdiction.

The big picture

2025 will likely be remembered as the year digital money went institutional. Rather than a zero-sum “banks vs stablecoins,” we are seeing a hybrid architecture emerge: public-chain innovation at the edge, bank and central bank money at the core, and interoperability layers knitting them together.

By committing to a blockchain-based shared ledger, Swift is signalling to the market that programmable, always-on settlement is not a crypto side-show but a new baseline for global finance — provided we can get governance, resilience and privacy right. That aligns with the Gillmore Centre’s mission: evidence-based research and policy engagement to make the transition both innovative and safe.

The Gillmore Centre series features authors from the Gillmore Centre of Financial Technology at Warwick Business School as they explore new innovations in fintech from an academic perspective. Keep an eye out for more articles from the Gilmore Centre to learn more about new developments in the field.