HSBC and Standard Chartered have completed the first live cross-border transaction using tokenised deposits on Swift’s blockchain-based ledger, marking a step towards round-the-clock payments between regulated banks.

The transaction, announced on 19 August, connected the two banks’ tokenised-deposit systems through Swift’s ledger. The platform recorded the resulting obligations as tokenised deposits on HSBC’s Tokenised Deposit Service and Standard Chartered’s infrastructure, before the obligations were matched and netted ahead of final settlement through existing systems.

Swift’s ledger became available for initial use in July, when the organisation said 17 banks across six continents were preparing to pilot live transactions. The latest transaction is the first interbank transaction executed on the ledger and is intended to demonstrate how regulated bank money can operate across different digital infrastructures.

HSBC said its Tokenised Deposit Service is already live in six markets: Hong Kong, Singapore, Luxembourg, the UK, the US and the UAE. The service supports currencies including Chinese yuan, Hong Kong dollar, Singapore dollar, euro, pound, US dollar and UAE dirham, and provides clients with 24/7 access to liquidity through HSBC’s banking infrastructure.

Lewis Sun, head of digital currencies at HSBC, said the transaction was a “landmark moment” for tokenised deposits and showed that digital money issued by banks could be interoperable while retaining existing regulatory oversight. He said the technology could help corporates move liquidity between financial institutions, improve cash visibility and reduce some of the complexity associated with traditional cross-border payments.

Standard Chartered said its tokenised-deposit capabilities form part of a wider digital assets and payments ecosystem covering custody, tokenisation and stablecoin settlement. The bank operates across 55 markets and said its infrastructure is designed to support the movement of regulated bank money across borders.

Mark Willis, head of emerging payments, transaction services and digital assets at Standard Chartered, said tokenised deposits were a “key pillar” of the bank’s digital assets strategy. He said the transaction represented an important step towards more seamless financial services and could help corporate and institutional clients manage treasury operations, improve working capital and support real-time liquidity management across markets.

The banks said the transaction forms part of a wider effort to apply distributed ledger technology to real-world payments while maintaining the role of regulated bank money. The development comes as financial institutions explore tokenised deposits as an alternative to privately issued digital currencies for institutional cross-border settlement.

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