Swift news: Davos, India’s payment ambitions and Swift’s bold steps in digital finance
Last month, Swift executives headed to Davos to join global leaders at the World Economic Forum. Let's dive in.
Swift news: Davos, India’s payment ambitions and Swift’s bold steps in digital finance
January 2026 edition | Read time: 6 minutes
Swift proved tokenised assets can bridge blockchain and traditional rails
- How Swift’s collaboration with India’s major banks is unlocking predictable, 24/7 global payments, and what it means for consumers, SMEs and financial institutions.
- Swift demonstrated how tokenised assets can be settled across blockchains and traditional rails.
- Hear from Swift and HSBC on why embedding a shared ledger matters and what comes next for cross-border payments.
- Swift and Standard Chartered unpack why digital assets are moving into production, and what financial institutions need to deliver always-on, interoperable services at scale.
- [Ebook] How Swift is driving the global adoption of digital assets across the financial ecosystem.
Swift at Davos: Creating the rails of tomorrow
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Swift executives engaged with leaders across finance, policy, and technology to help shape the next generation of global financial infrastructure. In both private discussions and public panels, the team met with key figures from across our industry and beyond, emphasising the importance of trust, security, resilience and interoperability in today’s world.
This year, Swift’s programme was exceptionally active, with dozens of meetings and several panel appearances. The week provided an opportunity to demonstrate how our payments scheme and ledger initiatives can act as practical building blocks for wider industry efforts, while also reflecting on Swift’s evolving role at the heart of the global ecosystem.
Panel highlights
How digital assets and shared global architecture can boost resilience and liquidity
Javier Perez-Tasso, CEO at Swift, took part in an invite-only discussion with industry leaders, including Bill Winters, CEO of Standard Chartered, Jennifer M. Johnson, CEO of Franklin Templeton, and Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle. The conversation explored how to unlock innovation at scale in financial infrastructure, unpacking how tokenised assets, compliant digital currencies and shared global architecture can boost resilience, bridge traditional and digital finance, and expand liquidity access.
The themes highlighted in this discussion align closely with our ongoing efforts to enhance cross-border payments through our scheme and ledger initiatives, which aim to boost speed, resilience and interoperability across traditional and emerging rails.
Digital currencies and the future of payments
Rosemary Stone, Chief Corporate Officer at Swift, spoke alongside Gordon Y. Liao, Chief Economist and Head of Research, Circle, and Katharine Braddick, Group Head of Strategic Policy, Barclays. The discussion explored how stablecoins and CBDCs can improve cross-border payments and advance financial inclusion. Rosemary underscored how Swift already supports fast, reliable, always-on value movement across 200+ countries and territories and 11,500 financial institutions.
Unlocking innovation and scale in financial infrastructure
Thierry Chilosi, Chief Business Officer at Swift, joined a panel with Tim Adams, President and CEO, Institute of International Finance, and Drew Propson, Head of Technology and Innovation in Financial Services, WEF. The conversation examined how real-time payments, advances in AI and accelerating fintech investment—particularly across the Middle East and North Africa—are reshaping global financial infrastructure. Thierry highlighted how our blockchain-based ledger, focused initially on enabling real-time 24/7 cross-border payments, will help accelerate the adoption of digital finance worldwide.
A strong start to a defining year
Swift’s presence at Davos 2026 reinforced our central role in connecting the global financial ecosystem and demonstrated the trust the industry places in our work. With our Scheme and Ledger initiatives gaining momentum, the visibility and engagement throughout the week marked a strong start to what promises to be a pivotal year for Swift. As we continue working with our community to build interoperable, future‑ready financial infrastructure, Davos ensured we move forward with clear industry support and renewed momentum.
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40+ financial institutions
We’re working with over 40 financial institutions to add a blockchain-based ledger to our infrastructure stack. By doing so, we’ll extend our trusted platform into a digital environment, unlock the potential for instant, always-on transactions at global scale and accelerate the industry’s transition to digital finance.
