DBS, OCBC, and UOB have executed their first live domestic Singapore dollar interbank transactions using tokenized deposits on Swift’s blockchain-based ledger, marking a significant milestone in continuous digital settlement infrastructure. The live trial follows Swift’s broader global rollout involving 17 banking institutions across six continents, designed to evaluate distributed-ledger technology for round-the-clock payment processing beyond traditional clearing hours. During the pilot, payment instructions were transmitted and matched across Swift’s unified ledger, allowing the participating banks to calculate and net real-time obligations on their respective digital-deposit systems before executing final settlement through established clearing channels.
The successful pilot demonstrates how tokenized deposits—digital representations of standard commercial bank claims issued by regulated institutions—can enable uninterrupted corporate treasury operations, cross-border trade execution, and digital commerce settlements, including on weekends. Transaction banking executives noted that expanding the technology to support both United States dollar and Singapore dollar transactions around the clock significantly reduces operational friction and liquidity fragmentation for enterprise clients. As tokenized deposit adoption expands, the three major Singaporean lenders plan to leverage the shared ledger architecture to facilitate broader commercial applications across enterprise supply chains and institutional capital markets.
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