After years of conducting experiments, SWIFT, the world’s leading provider of secure financial messaging services, today (Thursday) announced that its infrastructure can “seamlessly” facilitate the transfer of tokenised assets across multiple public and private blockchains. The member-owned cooperative conducted the trials in partnership with over a dozen global financial institutions, including the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ), BNP Paribas, BNY Mellon, Citi, and Clearstream.

Becoming a “Single Point of Entry” for Multiple Networks

In 2021, SWIFT unveiled plans to explore how it can support interoperability in the developing tokenized asset market, Finance Magnates reported. Tokenized assets describe digital assets that represent ownership of an underlying asset such as a financial instrument. Security, utility and non-fungible tokens are examples of such assets.

The majority of institutional investors believe that tokenized assets hold the power to revolutionise the asset management industry. However, because these assets are managed on different blockchains, managing interoperability is considered a major operational challenge to the adoption of such assets.

However, SWIFT believes that its infrastructure could be the way out. In a report released today, the financial messaging services provider noted that its solution has the potential to remove major obstacles hindering the expansion of tokenized asset markets, allowing them to grow and scale worldwide as they continue to evolve.

“Working with more than a dozen major financial institutions and market infrastructures and Chainlink, a leading Web3 services platform, SWIFT has successfully demonstrated that it can provide a single point of access to multiple networks using existing, secure infrastructure, thereby significantly reducing operational challenges and investment required for institutions to support the development of tokenised assets,” the organization explained.

Also speaking, Tom Zschach, the Chief Innovation Officer at SWIFT, emphasized that institutions need to be able to connect “seamlessly” to the full spectrum of the financial ecosystem for asset tokenization to reach its potential.

“Our experiments have demonstrated clearly that existing secure and trusted SWIFT infrastructure can provide that central point of connectivity, removing a huge hurdle in the development of tokenisation and unlocking its potential,” Zschach stated.

Cross-Border CBDC

Earlier in the year, SWIFT concluded a “successful” test that showed that its solution could help to link over 100 central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) being designed by nations across the world. The cooperative noted that central and commercial banks see “clear potential and value” in the solution.

“Our solution has been successfully tested across almost 5,000 transactions between two different blockchain networks and a traditional fiat currency, and we’re delighted to have the support of our community in developing it further,” Zschach explained.

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