Swift has introduced a blockchain ledger designed to give banks shared infrastructure for tokenized deposits issued on their own systems, with HSBC and Standard Chartered completing the first live cross-border transaction on it. The transaction settled in seconds rather than days, highlighting the pressure on Swift to improve a network whose cross-border settlement typically takes one to five business days and costs about 1% to 4% per transaction. Swift’s network covers about 11,500 institutions in 200 countries and territories and routes roughly $5 trillion in transactions daily. The initiative comes as stablecoins, tokenized deposits and other blockchain payment networks compete on speed and cost. BNY expects the stablecoin and tokenized cash market to reach as much as $3.7 trillion by 2030, while Citi forecasts the tokenized securities market will grow to $5.5 trillion over the same period. Swift does not hold or transfer customer funds; it sends standardized instructions that enable banks to debit and credit accounts, often through correspondent banks. Large banks are preparing for multiple payment networks to coexist, while Swift seeks to act as an interoperability layer between bank systems and blockchains. The source also describes Anvil as a shared on-chain collateral layer built on a programmable letter of credit, using reserve assets as a guarantee without a loan or interest while retaining custody and yield.