Swift, a major payments giant, has partnered with Chainlink (LINK) and several financial giants to conduct an experimental project on blockchain interoperability settlement.
According to Swift’s recent announcement, the company is currently testing blockchain interoperability with over a dozen institutions. The challenge faced by institutions dealing with tokenized assets lies in the lack of interoperability among different blockchains.
Each blockchain operates with its own distinct features and liquidity, which leads to friction and inefficiencies for businesses.
Swift believes that overcoming these challenges would greatly facilitate the institutional adoption of tokenized assets and contribute to long-term market acceptance.
The collaboration aims to explore how institutions can seamlessly interoperate with the multitude of blockchain networks emerging worldwide. Swift will work closely with several prominent financial institutions and FMIs, including Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ), BNP Paribas, BNY Mellon, Citi, Clearstream, Euroclear, Lloyds Banking Group, SIX Digital Exchange (SDX), and The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC).
Through a series of experiments, they will demonstrate how existing Swift infrastructure can efficiently facilitate the transfer of tokenized value across both public and private blockchain networks.
During the experiments, Chainlink, a leading Web3 services platform, will play a crucial role in providing connectivity across these diverse blockchain networks.
Chainlink is a decentralized oracle network offering secure and reliable data feeds to smart contracts on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain.
Swift’s Chief Innovation Officer, Tom Zschach, explains that the emergence of multiple blockchain networks is expected rather than a single dominant network. Each platform will serve specific customer segments with unique capabilities and requirements.
In such a fragmented ecosystem, it is impractical for financial institutions to individually connect with each platform. Hence, the collaboration with Swift aims to develop an interoperability model that enables global access to different platforms.