Swift's blockchain shared ledger went live on July 9 2026 with 17 banks piloting tokenised cross-border payments on a single shared infrastructure. The pilot spans North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America, and it is the first time Swift has run production-track settlement logic on a distributed ledger rather than pure messaging. This article names all 17 institutions, explains why the roster matters, and shows where the ledger still leans on Swift's traditional rails.
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The shared ledger is built by Consensys on Hyperledger Besu, a permissioned Ethereum Virtual Machine chain, with Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) as the interop layer connecting roughly 70 networks. Banks issue tokenised deposits, and Swift coordinates transfers through smart contracts aligned to the ISO 20022 messaging standard, running 24 hours a day.
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The 17 banks are BNY, Citi, Wells Fargo, BNP Paribas, HSBC, Lloyds, Standard Chartered, UBS, ANZ, DBS, MUFG, OCBC, UOB, First Abu Dhabi Bank, Mashreq, Itau Unibanco, and FirstRand. Together they cover the major correspondent-banking corridors, which is what makes a shared-ledger pilot testable across real cross-border flows rather than in one region.
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The roster is deliberately global. Swift confirmed the participants alongside the July 9 2026 go-live of the shared ledger. Selecting large clearing banks across five regions lets the pilot measure settlement across corridors that today depend on chains of intermediary banks. The list below groups the 17 by region and notes the role each brings.

The roster matters because cross-border settlement only works when both ends of a corridor sit on the same ledger. A pilot with 17 large clearing banks across five regions covers enough corridors to test whether tokenised deposits can settle without the usual chain of intermediary correspondents, which is where cost and delay accumulate today.
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Correspondent banking routes a payment through a series of banks that each hold accounts for one another. Every hop adds fees, reconciliation, and time. A shared ledger lets two banks that both issue tokenised deposits settle against a single source of truth. That only becomes measurable when the participating banks actually overlap on live corridors, so the breadth of this roster is the point, not a marketing detail. For the mechanics of that shift, see Cross-Border Stablecoin Payments vs SWIFT.
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The banks are settling tokenised deposits, which are commercial-bank money represented as tokens on the shared ledger. This is not a stablecoin and not central-bank money. Each token is a claim on a deposit at the issuing bank, moved through smart contracts while Swift coordinates the messaging in ISO 20022 format around the clock.
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Tokenised deposits differ from stablecoins in issuer, backing, and regulatory treatment. A deposit token is issued by the bank that holds the deposit; a stablecoin is issued by a non-bank against reserves. The distinction shapes who bears credit risk and how the instrument is supervised. For a full breakdown, read Tokenized Deposits vs Stablecoins and What Is a Tokenized Deposit?. Detail on the messaging standard the ledger uses is in the ISO 20022 documentation.
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The shared ledger runs on Hyperledger Besu, an open-source EVM client, deployed as a permissioned network built by Consensys. Chainlink CCIP provides the interoperability layer across roughly 70 connected networks, and Swift's smart contracts orchestrate settlement while preserving ISO 20022 messaging. The design is Linea-family in lineage but is not the public Linea network.
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Besu is a production Ethereum client maintained under the Hyperledger project, documented at Besu (hyperledger.org). Permissioned means only approved validators, which is what banks require for a regulated settlement network. Chainlink CCIP, described at Chainlink, moves messages and value between chains so the ledger is not a walled garden. This is a multi-network architecture, not a single monolithic chain, which is why an orchestration layer sits above the individual ledgers.
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No. Final settlement in the pilot still relies on Swift's traditional rails and existing correspondent relationships. The shared ledger coordinates and records tokenised transfers, but the leg that moves value with finality continues to run through established infrastructure. That gap is the honest limit of a pilot and the reason the network is still described as coordination rather than end-to-end settlement.
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This matters for anyone reading the launch as the end of correspondent banking. The ledger reduces reconciliation and adds a shared record, yet the last mile of finality is unchanged for now. The open question the pilot is designed to answer is whether tokenised deposits on a shared ledger can eventually carry final settlement themselves, and across how many corridors. Swift's own program description sits on SWIFT.
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Eco is cross-chain settlement infrastructure for stablecoins, and the shared-ledger design points at the same problem Eco solves: value that lives on many ledgers needs an orchestration layer to move between them. The Swift pilot uses CCIP to connect networks; Eco Routes selects between rails such as CCTP, Hyperlane, and LayerZero based on cost, speed, and finality.
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A world where banks issue tokenised deposits on Besu, stablecoins settle on public chains, and central-bank money moves on other ledgers is a multi-ledger world. The value is in routing across them, not in any single chain winning. That orchestration layer is where Eco operates, and it is the same architectural bet the Swift pilot is making with its interop layer.
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How many banks are in the Swift blockchain ledger pilot? Seventeen banks joined the pilot at the July 9 2026 go-live, spanning North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America.
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Is the shared ledger a stablecoin? No. Banks issue tokenised deposits, which are claims on commercial-bank deposits, not stablecoins issued against non-bank reserves.
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Who built it? Consensys built the ledger on Hyperledger Besu, with Chainlink CCIP as the interoperability layer.
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Related reading

Methodology and sources: Bank roster and go-live date from Swift's July 9 2026 shared-ledger announcement (swift.com). Technical architecture (Hyperledger Besu, Consensys, Chainlink CCIP) from Hyperledger, Consensys, and Chainlink primary documentation. Messaging standard from iso20022.org. Last updated July 2026.
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