Chainlink is working to let financial institutions connect their own systems and key-signing infrastructure to Swift’s blockchain-based shared ledger, the company announced at Sibos in Miami.
The solution is built on the Chainlink Runtime Environment (CRE), an orchestration layer for institutional smart contracts. It gives banks a single route for accessing the Swift ledger and managing smart contract activity across both their own tokenised deposit ledgers and Swift’s.
At its core is a self-signing model. Banks keep control of the keys that authorise transactions, while CRE runs the workflows linking them to the Swift ledger. Chainlink says this lets banks move to 24/7 tokenised payments without changing their existing security governance, approval processes or operating models.
Swift ledger
Swift unveiled the shared ledger at Sibos 2025. Developed with more than 40 financial institutions, it moved from concept to activation in nine months, and 17 first-mover institutions are now piloting tokenised deposit transactions on it.
The ledger coordinates cross-border payments using tokenised deposits that stay on banks’ own ledgers and balance sheets, preserving the benefits of commercial bank money. That orchestration happens before final settlement. Settlement still runs through agreed mechanisms such as real-time gross settlement (RTGS) systems. Banks can therefore extend payment availability without replacing their existing settlement arrangements.
