DBS, Citi Complete First Weekend Cross-Border Payment Using Tokenized Deposits on SWIFT

DBS and Citi moved tokenized bank deposits from Singapore to a U.S. destination on Saturday, completing what DBS described as the first transfer of its kind to be processed over a weekend through SWIFT’s digital-ledger infrastructure.

Settlement took only minutes, allowing the funds to move when conventional bank processing would normally be unavailable. Announcing the transfer on Monday, DBS contrasted that speed with standard international transfers, which can take up to two working days to settle.

The milestone highlights banks’ growing use of blockchain infrastructure to move money internationally while keeping deposits inside the conventional banking system.

SWIFT Ledger Draws Major Banks Into Tokenized Payments

The latest milestone builds on an August transaction between HSBC and Standard Chartered. That transfer marked the first time financial institutions used SWIFT’s ledger to move tokenized deposits across borders.

A month earlier, SWIFT had announced that the ledger was entering its initial operational stage. Seventeen large banks were preparing to trial tokenized deposits for international money movement, with Citi and DBS joining BNP Paribas, HSBC, ANZ, UBS and Standard Chartered among the participating institutions.

Citi Advances Another Digital-Deposit Project

Citi’s work extends beyond the Swift initiative. The lender is among a group of major U.S. banks developing another system for representing deposits digitally, with The Clearing House expected to run the infrastructure.

A launch is being targeted for the first six months of 2027, according to comments from the payments operator’s CEO, David Watson, reported by The Wall Street Journal in June.

DBS, JPMorgan Work to Link Deposit-Token Systems

DBS has another project underway with JPMorgan that aims to enable deposit-token platforms at different banks to communicate with one another.

The partnership was disclosed in late 2025. The companies said the proposed framework would use blockchain technology to enable on-chain transfers between their deposit-token systems. They plan to develop a common payments framework that could eventually be used across the banking industry.