After 70 years, why did SWIFT finally take the chain?

For decades, SWIFT @SwiftCommunity SWIFT has been a central and unshakeable hub in the area of international cross-border payments.Like the central nervous system of the traditional financial world, SWIFT connects tens of thousands of financial institutions around the globe and dominates the communication channels for cross-border financial flows.

How can SWIFT be understood as an artery for the settlement of funds? Take one example. After Iran was excluded from SWIFT in 2018, the gas and gas export clearance routes were compressed and export revenues were reduced significantly.The country's currency is rapidly weakening and the foreign exchange market is in turmoil.The United States dollar has skyrocketed from about 40,000 to about 170,000.

But SWIFT has long been very cautious about block chain technology:I'd rather improve my own system than be chained.

Today, however, the wind has changed dramatically: at the Sibos Congress in 2025, SWIFT announced that it would extend its infrastructure to the block chain environment and work with more than 30 banks around the world to develop shared books based on block chains.What has led to a change of attitude among the 70-year-old traditional cross-border payer who is finally willing to move up the chain?

SWIFT's past hesitation over the block chain is partly due to technical factors. As early as 2017, SWIFT tried to validate the concept of block chain payments (PoC) based on Hyperledger Fabric, when it was concluded that the technology was still not mature enough to meet the stringent requirements of real-time payments between banks worldwide.

This is also a side-proved by Hyperledger Fabric, a structural disadvantage of a chain of alliances like this at ToB's landing: it's really good at helping firms do a beautiful process of authority, identity, auditing, privacy isolation and compliance, so that B can quickly start a set.Custom, controllable and credible distributed account system.

But once the scene moves from intra-firm collaboration to open collaboration across institutions, regions and asset classes, Fabric ' s borders become clear.

By contrast, the ETA has almost ubiquitous tentacles in the encrypted world, not just as simple as the user base, but as a network of assets, liquidity, developers, protocol standards and infrastructure.

This contradiction also led SWIFT to focus on improving existing networks in the following years in order to defend its position with greater efficiency.

However, the surge in financial technology has led to a surge in SWIFT pressure: @Ripple The new sector chain payments challenge SWIFT's traditional structure, claiming that its efficiency cannot be compared to the near real-time settlement of the block chain.

In particular, over the years, Ripple and the regulatory settlement ended this high-profile litigation, and Ripple also suspended legal uncertainty by paying fines and withdrawing appeals.Ripple is also taking a big step forward in the vision of the payment gateway that he promised.

Ripple's revival may be just appetizers, but the greater threat comes from the wave of currency stabilization. USDT’s chain of payments to a network of foreign troops surged and the scale of the transaction rose. More than 43 per cent of B2B transactions in South-East Asia have begun to use a stable currency, which is rapidly emerging as the backbone of the global payment track.

It is clear that SWIFT can no longer remain indifferent when businesses and markets can bypass traditional banks with block-chain assets.

In addition to external competitive pressures, changes in customer demand are also an inherent driver of the SWIFT chain. Cross-border remittances from traditional SWIFT networks often pass through multiple intermediaries, which take several days and are costly, and the lack of transparency of processes makes tracing difficult. This slow and cumbersome pattern is incompatible with the demands of the modern economy for immediacy.

In particular, when NASDAQ prepares to implement a round-the-clock stock trade, the demand for capital flows will be higher as global capital markets move to sleepless nights.

On the contrary, block chains and monetization techniques are inherently appropriate for accelerating value flows: chain transfers are not subject to time zones and operating time limits, usually confirmed in minutes or even seconds at the L2 trap, significantly reducing settlement time. This efficient and transparent programme is clearly preferred by new generations of clients to the existing SWIFT delays of several days.

As a result, SWIFT led the creation of more than 30 global top-level financial institutions and technology companies in a distributed book. SWIFTAll you have to do is make your own shared books.as part of its infrastructure warehouse to record, rank, validate financial inter-agency transactions and target first scene with smart contract enforcement rules7 x 24 hours for cross-border payment.

目前到了什么阶段呢？仅仅是到概念原型。这一部分由 Consensys 来做，技术上可能大概率偏 EVM 方向，但具体落在哪条链（甚至是否公链）SWIFT尚未公布。