Banks settle weekend USD transfer using tokenised deposits

On Sept. 5, 2026 DBS in Singapore and Citi in New York settled a US dollar cross-border payment using tokenised deposits on Swift’s Digital Ledger. The transfer completed in minutes rather than the industry norm of up to two business days when weekends and time-zone gaps intersect. The transaction used bank-issued tokenised deposits on a permissioned ledger and did not involve public stablecoins.

Swift’s Digital Ledger is an EVM-compatible permissioned orchestration layer built on Hyperledger Besu that records and validates interbank payment commitments while settlement of the underlying funds remains inside existing banking infrastructure. Tokenised deposits are claims on actual bank deposits recorded on the ledger; the funds remain bank liabilities and no public stablecoin such as USDC or USDT moved between institutions.

The ledger entered initial operation in July with 17 participating banks. The Sept. 5 transfer is the second confirmed weekend cross-border USD payment on the platform, following a live transfer between HSBC and Standard Chartered in August. In the three weeks before the DBS–Citi payment, the pilot logged other live flows: Citi processed USD transfers with First Abu Dhabi Bank and OCBC on Sept. 2, and HSBC and Standard Chartered completed a live cross-border transfer on Aug. 19.

The weekend settlement capability addresses a common commercial issue: corporate treasuries moving liquidity across time zones often wait until the next business day, which delays supplier payments and freezes working capital. DBS has reported demand from companies that operate continuous services, including e-commerce and digital platforms, and cited projections that Asia’s outbound cross-border payment volume could rise from $13.5 trillion in 2025 to $24 trillion by 2033.

Regulators and central banks have expressed a preference for payments that remain within regulated bank liabilities. The Bank for International Settlements recently argued that tokenised deposits should carry most day-to-day and wholesale payments while stablecoins serve narrower roles. Several banks are pursuing multiple technical approaches: Citi is part of a US group building a tokenised deposit network through The Clearing House with a target launch in the first half of 2027, and DBS and JPMorgan agreed a framework in November 2025 to enable transfers between their deposit token systems. More than 20 institutions have committed to a joint stablecoin venture, and some banks are participating in both tokenised-deposit and stablecoin projects.

Swift’s long-running messaging network faces competition from rails that settle continuously. The network supports a large volume of global flows, and industry participants say adoption of tokenised deposits or stablecoins will depend on factors such as integration, cost and counterparty trust rather than settlement speed alone.

Participants in the pilot describe the recent transactions as proof points rather than finished products. The activity demonstrates that tokenised deposits can settle outside normal banking hours while keeping funds within regulated banking channels. Wider corporate use would require operational links between institutions, liquidity arrangements and regulatory clarity before thousands of corporates route weekend liquidity through deposit tokens.