Swift platform transforms cross-border payments experience across existing rails and digital value

Consumers and small businesses in countries across the world are benefiting from a transformative Swift framework that is giving them the best possible user experience in terms of speed, transparency and predictability.

From Turkey to Spain in 15 seconds, from Australia to India in 37 and from Brazil to the US in just a minute, Swift’s consumer payments framework is driving the ability of banks all over the world to enable their customers to transact as confidently internationally as they do at home.  

More than 100 financial institutions across the world are either live or going live with the framework, extending the speed and transparency of Swift’s inter-bank rails to the end user and giving people and businesses upfront certainty on cost and FX rates, as well as the fastest possible settlement time.

Where fiat and tokenised converge 

As consumers feel the benefits of the framework, financial institutions are showing how Swift can power the benefits of digital finance to be felt at global scale. Most of the 17 first-mover banks to use Swift’s blockchain ledger have now used it for 24/7 real-time payments, sending tokenised value between Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and South America.

Between them, they’ve transacted in five currencies – EUR, GBP, HKD, SGD and USD – for use cases including institution-to-institution settlement, corporate treasury and interbank funding.

Taken together, the framework and the ledger are demonstrating how Swift’s trusted platform, which facilitates movement of global GDP every two to three days, can drive the best possible payments experience for customers of any kind, both now and in the future.

Opening Swift’s flagship global conference, Sibos, in Miami today, CEO Javier Pérez-Tasso said: “The question is not anymore about Tradfi or Defi. It’s not either or. The Swift platform will allow you to move any form of regulated value – whether it is fiat or tokenised – at global scale. Over 200+ countries and markets. And 40,000 corridors. That’s what it’s all about.”

Achieving shared goals 

While the ledger is demonstrating how Swift’s global reach can mitigate the fragmentation caused by an uneven pace of innovation around the world, Swift’s consumer framework is showing what’s possible using the technology already available, and also driving the industry towards the cross-border payments targets set by the G20.  

Swift’s network is fast: 75% of transactions reach the end bank within 10 minutes. But 80% of a typical transaction’s journey time is spent in the ‘last mile’, after it has left the Swift network at the domestic bank and before being credited to the customer.

Now, Swift’s framework is enabling money to arrive with customers in minutes or seconds across some of the busiest payments routes, while providing upfront certainty on costs and end-to-end transparency.

Innovation scaled on a secure, global network

Swift connects 12,500 institutions, which transact in 150 currencies across 200 markets. The consumer framework and the blockchain ledger are already leveraging that global reach.

Swift’s network has earned the trust of the financial industry, helping build the global scale the platform has today. That trust is built on both the security, resilience and reliability of the network, as well as Swift’s constant evolution to meet the needs of its users. The consumer framework extends the benefits of Swift’s speed and transparency to financial institutions’ retail customers, while the ledger is another example of how Swift has evolved over time.

Moving forwards

The consumer framework now gives users the experience they expect when sending money anywhere, at home or abroad. And today, Swift announced it’s going even further: working with banks and domestic instant payment schemes from across the world to make sending money internationally as easy as sending a text or email.

Just as Swift constantly evolves, the ledger itself will adapt to meet institutions’ needs.

The MVP was deliberately focused on enabling 24/7 real-time payments, leveraging tokenised deposits as a digital form of commercial bank money that is already familiar to participating institutions. Interoperable by design, the ledger was built to be a foundation for further innovation, ready to evolve to meet the market’s needs in areas such as programmable money and agentic commerce, and to enable traditional and digital assets to co-exist, globally.

Both initiatives end at the same destination: a best-in-class cross-border payments experience for both people and businesses, enabled by one single platform – and without compromising on the standards, resilience and interoperability on which global finance depend.