The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift) and blockchain data provider Chainlink will work with more than 12 major banks across the world to test the use of existing Swift infrastructure to transfer tokenized assets across public and private blockchain networks, Swift said on Tuesday.

Fast facts

Banks working with Swift and Chainlink include Citi, BNY Mellon, Lloyds Banking Group, the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, BNP Paribas, Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited, Clearstream, Euroclear, and SIX Digital Exchange.
The trial will also look at how the industry could address potential operational and regulatory hurdles that banks face in the blockchain environment.
There are over 11,000 banks and financial institutions connected to the SWIFT network.
Cayman island-based Chainlink, a network that connects Ethereum smart contracts to external data sources, will provide connectivity across public and private blockchains in this experiment.
Last year, Swift announced a partnership with the blockchain infrastructure firm to explore blockchain interoperability through Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP).
Having just a single interface for access to blockchains for banks to transact on will make transactions more secure, according to Sergey Nazarov, the co-founder of Chainlink.
“Connectivity between banks and blockchains created by CCIP can also enable the growth of [decentralized finance], as banks will find it increasingly easy to interact with public blockchains and move value to and from them using their existing systems,” he added.