SWIFT, the global financial messaging service, and Chainlink, a leading provider of real-world data to blockchains, have announced their collaboration to test the integration of public and private blockchains for global banking.
This partnership aims to connect major banks and financial organizations with various blockchain networks, exploring new possibilities for efficient and secure asset transfers.
Chainlink, a web3 infrastructure provider, will play a pivotal role in this partnership by offering connectivity across both public and private blockchains. This means that financial institutions participating in the experiments will have the opportunity to test the compatibility and effectiveness of SWIFT’s infrastructure in facilitating the transfer of tokenized assets across various blockchain networks.
“We’re excited to work with Swift. It’s clear that as banks endeavor to access multiple blockchains, a common connectivity layer across the various chains will be a critical building block for their adoption of on-chain finance,” Sergey Nazarov, Co-Founder of Chainlink maintained.
However, the collaboration between SWIFT and Chainlink was initially announced at Chainlink’s annual conference SmartCon last year.
Promising Future for Banking and Blockchain Integration
By simplifying operations and settlement procedures, blockchain technology has the potential to attract more investors to private markets and enhance liquidity.
Recognizing this potential, SWIFT aims to leverage the involvement of major financial institutions to drive the growth of the blockchain industry beyond the trillion-dollar mark.
As blockchain networks continue to emerge, it is becoming increasingly clear that there won’t be a single prevailing blockchain network. Instead, there will be multiple platforms catering to different customer segments with unique capabilities and requirements.
Connecting to each of these platforms individually would be impractical for financial institutions. Thus, the collaboration between SWIFT and Chainlink seeks to develop an interoperability model that allows seamless access to different blockchain platforms globally, providing a much-needed solution to the highly fragmented ecosystem.
In a statement, Tom Zschach Chief Innovation Officer of Swift asserted,
“In such a highly fragmented ecosystem, it would simply not be feasible for financial institutions to connect to every platform individually. That’s why the community is working with Swift to develop an interoperability model that would enable access to different platforms globally.”
Furthermore, SWIFT’s forthcoming industry experiments will showcase how its infrastructure can facilitate interoperability and ultimately enable the transfer of tokenized value between existing systems and both public and private distributed ledger technology (DLT) platforms.
Swift Will Experiment with Multiple Use Cases
These experiments will involve various use cases, including transfers between wallets on the same public blockchain network, transfers from public to permissioned blockchains, and transfers between different public blockchains. Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) will ensure complete interoperability between the source and destination blockchains, with Chainlink serving as the enterprise abstraction layer connecting the Swift network to the Ethereum Sepolia network.
In addition to the technical aspects, SWIFT’s experiments will explore the non-technological considerations that regulated institutions must address when interacting with public blockchain networks and engaging in cross-network transactions.
As the experiments progress, the potential for greater efficiencies, reduced costs, and increased liquidity in capital markets becomes ever more tangible, setting the stage for significant growth in the blockchain industry.
