Siemens Completes €300 Million Bond Settlement via Blockchain in Minutes

Written by: Thejaswini M A

Compile: Block Unicorn

In the 1970s, U.S. companies hired consultants to slow down the flow of funds.

This is known as remote payment. To delay payment, a buyer in New Jersey would issue a check from an obscure bank in Montana, thousands of miles away.

Due to the long distance and additional handoff steps between banks, checks can take several days to clear. With interest rates soaring above 10%, keeping these funds in your account for a few extra days can generate unexpected earnings.

Some consultants were tasked with maintaining maps that tracked which small-town banks had the longest clearing times. It was the massive volume of transactions that made this system work. In 1970, Americans issued 8 billion checks; by 1980, that number had risen to 16 billion. The Federal Reserve’s float—the funds simultaneously present in two places because checks had been deposited but not yet cleared—averaged about $3 billion per day in 1972. Between 1975 and 1978, this figure more than doubled.

The Federal Reserve was furious. In February 1979, the Federal Reserve released a report on remote deposit, followed by a policy statement requiring banks to cease assisting such practices. The Monetary Control Act of 1980 mandated the complete elimination of this practice. Two decades later, the Check 21 Act finally brought an end to it. Today, most checks are cleared within one business day, and the Federal Reserve handles all checks in a building in Atlanta. It was all over.

Siemens has over 12,000 employees across more than 80 countries worldwide, with its Global Business Services division handling invoicing, payroll processing, and account reconciliation. Airbus established an office in Lisbon in July 2021 and currently has over 1,000 employees at this center and within its industrial operations in Portugal. Goldman Sachs has a total workforce of 47,400 employees.

In September 2024, Siemens issued €300 million in bonds and settled them via blockchain within minutes.

Today, I’d like to show you the connection between these two facts. Let’s get started…

In February 2023, Siemens issued €60 million on the Polygon platform, with settlement occurring two days later. Eighteen months later, Siemens issued another €300 million, converting the public crypto network SWIAT into SWIAT. SWIAT, built by a consortium of European banks, is a closed ledger designed specifically for transactions compliant with institutional regulations. This regulatory alignment enabled integration with the German Federal Bank’s trigger solution, allowing the full €300 million to be automatically settled in minutes using central bank money.

Investors subscribe directly and immediately see their registration details after settlement. Peter Rasgub, the company’s chief financial officer, is responsible for both offerings, with the second offering nearly eliminating all settlement risks for all parties involved.

Typically, institutions like Clearstream—a large central securities depository—must be involved to handle such securities certificates. No employee at Clearstream would lose their job over a single German bond.

Deel provides payroll management services to over 40,000 companies and 1.5 million employees across more than 150 countries and regions, handling over $22 billion in annual transactions. Starting January 2026, businesses will be able to pay all their global salaries directly using stablecoin vaults. In June 2026, Deel launched its USD-backed digital balance, DLUSD.

What other issues do employers face? Liquid funds trapped in overseas bank accounts. Emergency troubleshooting after failed wire transfers. Currency exchange fees charged by foreign exchange intermediaries. Manual account verification.

For workers, what else is profitable? In Argentina, Turkey, and Ukraine, wages paid in local currencies may depreciate by 20% to 40% within a year. In 2025, 85% of Deel’s contractors in Argentina chose to receive their wages in U.S. dollars. This June, the company began offering them dollar balances within their existing app—built on the Bridge, Privy, and Tempo platforms—and providing rewards for idle funds. In May, the company started paying full-time employees in the U.S. and the eurozone 10% to 25% of their after-tax net salary in stablecoins issued on the Polygon platform.

From a financial perspective, the practicality of stablecoins is now supported by concrete data. A joint survey by EY and Parthenon of 350 corporate executives found that 13% of companies have already adopted stablecoins. Among these, 41% achieved cost reductions of more than 10% in cross-border B2B payments. This efficiency gain saved $5 million on a $50 million transfer project—funds previously counted as fixed operating costs. Looking ahead, 54% of non-user respondents plan to adopt this infrastructure within the next year.

By February 2026, actual payments made via end-user stablecoins are projected to reach approximately $390 billion annually, doubling the 2024 figure, with about 60% consisting of business-to-business (B2B) transactions rather than mere transfers. Hyundai Card completed a cross-border business payment in just seven minutes. Visa has achieved an annualized settlement volume of $7 billion across nine stablecoin chains, a 50% increase in a single quarter. These are not fringe experiments by crypto companies.

Enterprises are using stablecoins to address the technical issues previously discussed, such as slow cross-border settlement and trapped funds.

JPMorgan’s Kinexys processes approximately $50 billion in transactions daily, with a cumulative clearing volume of $3 trillion, including over $1.75 trillion in intraday repurchase transactions. BlackRock has delivered tokenized money market funds as collateral to Barclays. BNY Mellon processes $354 billion in transactions daily. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) is collaborating with Google Cloud to build a similar system, aiming to create a collateral market worth $15 trillion.

Let me explain why collateral is important when you're building a house.

A hedge fund holds a position it does not wish to sell and wants to use it as collateral for a loan. Due to mutual distrust between the parties, the collateral is held by a neutral third-party custodian. A contract for the custodian was previously negotiated. Over several days, the assets are transferred back and forth, with fees accumulating continuously.

Semi-liquid assets preserve the original security of collateral while altering how borrowers can use it. They can freeze collateral, adjust spending terms, or even bypass transfers entirely. Like Kinexys, its valuation is also estimated at $15 trillion. Look at today’s software-driven world and consider which jobs still remain—logistics for transferring collateral have vanished, leaving only the challenging human judgments of asset valuation and late-night default decisions. This is the advice I’d give to anyone deciding on budget priorities.

This means that technology cannot eliminate the cost of misjudging counterparties. It also explains why some projects succeed while others fail.

Between 2018 and 2020, several major corporations, including HSBC, Maersk, and BNP Paribas, launched four trade finance blockchain networks. However, none of these networks survived beyond 2023.

• June 2022 — we.trade went bankrupt.
• November 2022 – Maersk and IBM shut down TradeLens.
• Early 2023 – Marco Polo Restaurant closed with $4.6 million in debt.
• November 2023 – Contour shut down after averaging only 60 to 70 transactions per month (later acquired by the XDC Network).

Faster electronic letters of credit accelerate document processing without compromising the core costs of credit underwriting.

Komgo is the only one among these companies to survive. It made it this far by abandoning blockchain technology. Launched in 2018 by several major banks, Komgo initially offered digital letters of credit and document workflow tools. The letter of credit product ultimately failed, while the paper document product continued to operate. As competitors collapsed trying to digitize trust, Komgo survived by completely pivoting to focus on mechanical pipeline operations.

Tether demonstrated what happens when a financial company refuses to evaluate counterparties. It functions entirely as a mechanical pipeline, accepting U.S. dollars, holding Treasury securities, and issuing tokens, while actual customer transactions are handled by exchanges—eliminating operational costs associated with human trust. This fully automated asset transfer model enabled a team of 300 employees to generate $10.09 billion in profits in 2025. Tether’s per-employee revenue reached $33.6 million, far surpassing traditional risk-management banks like JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs.

Subsequently, the company entered the lending market. Its secured loans increased from $14.6 billion as of September 30 to $17.04 billion as of December 31, adding nearly $7 billion in six months. Although borrower identities are confidential, these loans are backed by a safety net of $6.34 billion.

When Tether began lending for the second time, it had to hire staff to assess collateral and conduct late-night margin calls.

Two details significantly distort Tether’s profitability. First, nearly half of its profits stem solely from the surge in the value of its massive gold and Bitcoin reserves. Second, it issues billions of dollars’ worth of tokens without paying any interest. If a traditional bank held such a massive amount of customer funds, it would need to pay billions of dollars in interest annually.

Circle also exhibits the same boundary from the other side. According to its 10-K filing, the company expects its distribution costs related to Coinbase to reach $1.4 billion in 2025, up from the previous $924.5 million. This means that 51% of its $2.7 billion in revenue flows to Coinbase, a company that neither issues USDC nor manages reserves. Coinbase handles user onboarding, KYC processes, and anti-fraud teams. Verifying customer identities still requires human judgment. By fully outsourcing this process, Circle reduces its workforce, converting what would otherwise be internal payroll expenses into external contract expenditures.

So, where should it be built?

Enterprise blockchain and stablecoin technology solve three major operational challenges: it enables automated flows of cash, collateral, and instruments; unlocks idle funds previously trapped in payroll floats and custodial accounts; and eliminates cross-border friction in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia—the very factor executives report as key to achieving a 10% reduction in costs.

Corporate bond issuance has seen almost no interest. Germany’s eWpG program enabled Siemens to successfully issue bonds. As of June 2024, the total amount of digital securities issued under eWpG amounted to approximately €236 million, with KfW German Development Bank issuing €150 million through two transactions. However, this has had no impact on the vibrancy of the European corporate bond market.

In the past, finance managers profited by delaying settlements. After floating rates disappeared, they shifted to managing pre-funded accounts. Today, tokenization has completely transformed this dynamic.