DBS and Citi Complete Weekend Dollar Payment on Swift Ledger

DBS and Citi carried out a U.S. dollar transfer between Singapore and Citi’s New York office on Sept. 5 using tokenized deposits recorded on Swift’s Digital Ledger. The banks said the payment completed in minutes and took place over a weekend, extending the ledger’s live activity beyond normal banking hours.

Swift characterizes the shared ledger as an orchestration layer that coordinates the movement of bank-issued tokenized deposits held on participants’ own ledgers. While the blockchain component handled the coordination, Swift confirmed that final settlement for the transaction remained with existing banking systems and was not moved onto the ledger itself.

For corporate treasurers, the test demonstrated the potential to shift liquidity across time zones without losing days to weekend gaps; DBS contrasted the result with an industry norm of up to two business days for cross-border payments. The Sept. 5 transfer is the second publicly confirmed live use of the ledger, following a cross-border transfer carried out by HSBC and Standard Chartered in August, and is notable for occurring on the Singapore–U.S. corridor over a weekend.

Swift announced on July 9 that the Digital Ledger was ready for initial use and said 17 banks across six continents were preparing live pilots using tokenized deposits, with 24/7 cross-border payments as an early use case. DBS is the only Asian-headquartered bank in the ledger’s 12-bank core design group. DBS did not disclose the value of the Sept. 5 transaction or provide a timetable for broader client availability.