- Swift partners with Consensys to design a blockchain-based shared ledger for global payments.
- More than 30 top banks worldwide are collaborating on the project’s design.
- Ripple’s XRP remains a rival solution, aiming for real-time settlement and reduced costs.
Swift has taken a major step in its modernization drive by announcing the launch of a blockchain-based shared ledger. The project, which was announced at the Sibos conference in Frankfurt, is being created jointly with Joe Lubin’s blockchain-focused company, Consensys.
As described by Swift, the project’s goal is to extend the financial sector to 24/7 real-time cross-border transactions on an unprecedented scale.
Today, Swift collaborates with over 30 banks, including big players as HSBC, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Banco Santander. It starts off the first phase, building on a conceptual product conceived by Consensys. Swift hopes to grow this into additional stages, forming a new digital finance infrastructure.
It will be a secure, up-to-date record, open-book fashion, tracking transactions through smart contracts, validating, and ordering payments. Quick stressed that the role is on the infrastructure level, where banks and central entities will be deciding what sort of tokens are allowed to travel over this network.
Global Banks Back the Initiative
Member banks come from 16 countries, including Citi, BNP Paribas, MUFG, DBS Bank, Wells Fargo, and Standard Chartered. They are there to offer insights on design, usability, and interoperability into the current financial infrastructure.
Swift’s CEO, Javier Pérez-Tasso, explained that the institution is working fast to provide infrastructure that is fast yet maintains the trust and compliance that international banking requires.
This is the extension of Swift’s digital strategy based on the extension of its previous digital assets tests, as well as interoperability between the distributed ledger technologies (DLT) and traditional fiat payment rails.
The firm is also introducing solutions to align transactions between both the public and private blockchain networks, hoping to facilitate various use cases ranging from remittances to corporate transfers.
Ripple Stays in the Spotlight
Even with Swift’s big leap, Ripple still manages to portray itself as the ultimate competitor in the dissolution of cross-border inefficiencies. Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity product and XRP token work to avoid pricey pre-funded accounts as well as correspondent banking, which holds up trillions of dollars’ worth of liquidity.
Developers and experts such as Panos have indicated that XRP offers value transfer directly as well as instant payout, as opposed to Swift’s use of data messaging.
Also Read: Ripple’s RLUSD Stablecoin Hits $789M, Driving XRP Ledger’s Institutional Boom
