Chainlink Says Banks Can Use Swift to Access Blockchains via CRE
Chainlink said on Tuesday that the approach allows banks and service providers to access public or permissioned blockchains without replacing core infrastructure, since Swift’s ISO 20022 messages can initiate onchain actions via CRE. The company announced the initiative in Frankfurt, Germany.
A first implementation involved UBS Tokenize, UBS’s in-house tokenization unit. In a pilot, subscriptions and redemptions for a UBS tokenized fund smart contract were initiated by ISO 20022 messages sent across Swift and handled by CRE, according to Chainlink.
CRE received the messages and triggered fund workflow logic in the Chainlink Digital Transfer Agent (DTA) technical standard, Chainlink disclosed. The demonstration focused on connecting offchain banking rails with onchain fund processes.
Chainlink framed the effort as an extension of its prior work with Swift and UBS under the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Project Guardian in 2024. That project explored settlement of tokenized fund orders with offchain cash settlement using existing payment systems.
By leaning on Swift’s installed base, the setup is meant to let institutions interact with blockchain applications through tools and identity frameworks they already use. Chainlink detailed that this could remove a barrier to experimenting with tokenized funds and related services.
The company described the messaging-to-smart-contract link as a plug-and-play model for transfer agents and other intermediaries. It said the design aims to simplify compliance automation and reconciliation by placing more of the workflow onchain.
Chainlink did not disclose timelines for production rollouts or name additional asset managers beyond UBS Tokenize. The company positioned the initiative as relevant to the global funds industry.
Essentially, the initiative means: Swift meets smart contracts, and UBS gets a test drive—because nothing says “future of finance” like sending old-school bank messages to direct blockchain code without breaking a sweat.
