Singaporean financial services enterprise DBS and US financial titan Citi successfully performed the initial weekend tokenized international transfer between the United States and Singapore on Saturday.
As DBS announced on Monday, the two institutions carried out the transfer utilizing digital tokens representing deposits via the Swift Digital Ledger to overcome the limitations of standard banking schedules.
The transfer settled within minutes, an outcome DBS described as a “significant improvement” compared to the typical industry standard of up to two business days required for conventional international money transfers.
This operation illustrates how legacy financial institutions are investigating distributed ledger infrastructure for faster international transfers while retaining funds within regulated banking frameworks. Standard Chartered and HSBC previously became the pioneers to finalize a tokenized international transfer on the blockchain ledger of Swift back in August.
Back in July, Swift, which operates the premier global financial messaging network, stated that its blockchain-based ledger was ready for deployment and that preparations were underway to test tokenized international payments involving 17 prominent financial institutions, which encompass Citi, DBS, HSBC, BNP Paribas, UBS, ANZ, and Standard Chartered.
Furthermore, Citi belongs to a consortium of major American banks intending to roll out a distinct tokenized deposit network during the initial half of 2027 managed by The Clearing House, as David Watson, chief executive officer of the institution-owned transfer provider, revealed to The Wall Street Journal in June.
During November 2025, DBS and JPMorgan disclosed objectives to build a distributed ledger tokenization architecture to support onchain movements across their respective deposit token networks, with the goal of establishing a market benchmark for interbank transactions.
Originally published at https://cointelegraph.com/news/dbs-citi-first-weekend-tokenized-deposit-swift?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss_partner_inbound.
