DBS and Citibank Complete Weekend USD Cross-Border Payment via SWIFT Digital Ledger

ChainCatcher reports that on September 5, DBS and Citibank’s New York office completed a cross-border USD payment between Singapore and the United States using tokenized deposits via the Swift Digital Ledger. The transaction was executed over the weekend and took only minutes, compared to traditional cross-border payments, which typically require up to two business days—eliminating delays caused by time zones and weekend closures. This marks the second confirmed real-time application of the ledger, following the first real-time cross-border transaction using tokenized deposits conducted by HSBC and Standard Chartered in August. Swift announced on July 9 that the ledger was available for initial use, with 17 banks prepared to pilot it; DBS is the only bank headquartered in Asia among the 12 core design group members. Rachel Chew, Chief Operating Officer of DBS Group, stated that the Swift Digital Ledger is connecting traditional banking infrastructure with emerging digital networks to drive tokenized money from experimentation to real-world application. Mridula Iyer, Head of South Asia Services at Citibank, noted that the weekend real-time transaction demonstrates that 24/7 cross-border payments have become a reality. DBS launched DBS Token Services in 2024, offering 24/7 programmable instant value transfer services.