DBS, a Singapore-headquartered bank, and Citi’s New York office completed a cross-border US dollar payment between Singapore and the US over the weekend of September 5 using tokenized deposits on the Swift Digital Ledger.

DBS said the transfer took minutes, versus an industry norm of up to two business days for some cross-border payments because of time-zone differences and weekend gaps.

Swift said the shared ledger is ready for use, with 17 banks set to pioneer tokenised cross-border payments on its infrastructure.

Tokenized deposits are bank balances recorded on a distributed ledger that remain claims on the issuing bank, unlike stablecoins, which are typically issued by nonbanks.

In Singapore, the Monetary Authority of Singapore has used Project Guardian to test tokenized-asset applications by regulated financial institutions in a controlled framework.

Similar efforts are emerging. HSBC and Standard Chartered recently tested interbank tokenised deposits, while DBS cited a Money20/20 and FXC Intelligence forecast that Asia’s outbound cross-border payments will reach about US$24 trillion by 2033.

🔗 Source: DBS

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